Dear President Obama,
Now that the health care debate is over, maybe you'll have timeto refocus on some of your other campaign promises, such as open andtransparent government.
I bring this up, sir, because 15 months into your presidency, therealities of your administration haven't reached the high-mindedtones of your campaign. Quite plainly, you promised transparency.Quite frankly, you're failing at it.
In fact, failing is too kind a word, sir. You are doing horribly.
According to a recent study by The Associated Press, whichanalyzed Freedom of Information requests at 17 major federalgovernment agencies during your first year in office, youradministration is more secretive than that of your predecessor.Remember him? The one you just happened to criticize over and overagain from the stump for overseeing the most secretiveadministration in American history?
During your first year, those 17 agencies rejected 466,872 FOIArequests, the AP found. During the last year of President George W.Bush's administration those agencies rejected 312,683 requests. Andyour administration received 11 percent fewer requests.
This has occurred even after you signed a much heralded executiveorder on Jan. 21, 2009, that stated:
"All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure,in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied inFOIA, and to usher in a new era of open government. The presumptionof disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA."
Bush's position on sunshine even before Sept. 11 was that theless the American people knew, the better off they were. We saw thedevastating results, and your election was the rejection of eightyears of his politics of anti-intellectualism.
Yet despite your executive order and similar efforts by AttorneyGeneral Eric Holder, the numbers are dismal, even ludicrous. Anotherstudy by George Washington University released earlier this monthfound that 30 of 90 government agencies that process FOIA requestshave made the change toward a presumption of disclosure that yourexecutive order mandated.
This is only made more stupefying by your repeated statementsthat transparency is one of your core beliefs. If so, fix FOIA.
Take action, sir. Appoint a Transparency Czar. Give someone abully pulpit from which to slap the around the bureaucrats. Make theOffice of Federal Government Transparency responsible for FOIAcompliance across the government. Allow it to investigate -- and, ifneeded, overrule -- individual agency rejections.
Appoint someone with passion for the work. Rep. Henry Waxman ofLos Angeles would be an excellent choice. So would former U.S.Comptroller General David Walker.
Your friend Sarah Palin recently spouted off that American needs"a commander in chief, not a law professor" in the Oval Office. Shecouldn't be more wrong, Mr. President. Your sense of history andknowledge of the law gives you the insight to know that AmericanDemocracy only works with an informed citizenry.
On March 16 in San Francisco, the Freedom of InformationCommittee of the Northern California Chapter of the Society ofProfessional Journalists handed out its annual James Madison Awards.(Full disclosure: I won my third Madison Award this year).
What makes these awards notable, Mr. President, is that theyrecognize the kind of probative and salient journalism and activismthat Madison and the other founders enabled through the FirstAmendment.
Those men understood the crucial nature of an independent andfree press to holding government accountable. No other business isgiven a specific protection in the Constitution.
The underlying work for the awards given -- from digging throughcourt files to finding evidence of police abuse to posting databasesculled from government records on the Internet -- were the result ofthe aggressive use of access laws.
Two hundred years later, Madison's legacy lives.
A question for you Mr. Obama, is what awards will be named foryou in two centuries?
You need to fix the federal government's compliance with theFreedom of Information Act, Mr. President and live up to another ofyou campaign promises.
Health care reform won't be your only legacy.
Thomas Peele is an investigative reporter for the Bay Area NewsGroup. Contact him at tpeele@bayareanewsgroup.com.
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