Freedom of Information request backlog growing

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — Citizens, groups and corporations are putting in fewer requests for information from the federal government, but it's taking longer to get answers and they get turned down more often.

The Coalition of Journalists for Open Government found in a study of 13 Cabinet departments and nine agencies that the number of unprocessed requests rose from 104,225 at the end of fiscal 2004 to 148,603 at the end of fiscal 2005.

Meanwhile, the number of requests processed between 2004 and 2005 dropped from 522,817 to 477,937. As a result, unprocessed requests rose from 20 percent of the total processed to 31 percent.

Full or partial releases of the information requested declined from 67 percent of all requests in 2004 to 63 percent in 2005.

The federal Freedom of Information Act marks its 40th anniversary on July 4.

"This study paints a very bleak picture for the Freedom of Information Act," said Rick Blum of the Sunshine in Government Initiative. "The law is having a midlife crisis at age 40.

"Congress and the executive branch need to give this report a very good look," said Blum, whose organization is a coalition of nine news media groups, including The Associated Press and the coalition that produced the report.

Blum lamented the failure of Congress last year to enact a bipartisan proposal that would have streamlined administration of the act and made it clear when Congress was exempting data from it.

At the Justice Department, which oversees enforcement of the act governmentwide, spokeswoman Gina Talamona said an executive order issued by President Bush on Dec. 14 "recognizes the need for agencies to improve on their backlogs of pending FOIA requests and calls upon them to reduce or eliminate them."

The order requires agencies to report on their progress by next Feb. 1.

The coalition study found that since the Bush administration took office, the number of government employees working on FOIA requests in the 22 agencies studied declined by 23 percent.

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