SUN EDITORIAL:

Greater transparency

Congress should explain itself when it decides to exempt records from the public’s view

Saturday, Oct. 3, 2009 | 2:06 a.m.

Efforts to improve the federal Freedom of Information Act, which provides the public access to government documents, have been hampered by members of Congress.

The Sunshine in Government Initiative, a coalition of groups that supports open government, has identified 246 statutes that exempt documents from disclosure to the public. Over the past decade those statutes were cited by federal agencies as reasons for rejecting public records requests.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Associated Press CEO Tom Curley said many of those exemptions had been inserted by members of Congress in massive legislation without any public debate. They have since been buried in federal law, unnoticed until an agency uses the exemption to deny a request for documents.

Some of the exemptions are stunning. For example, statutes prohibit the federal government from releasing the names of watermelon growers, people who handle honey, and avocado importers.

Why would the government keep the names of those people secret? Are there national security issues related to honey? Are they selling avocados in top-secret, covert actions?

This is ridiculous. These companies are surely known to the public, so why is it that the government keeps them secret?

We don’t know, and that’s the problem with the way Congress has handled these exemptions. There is no public rationale to support them.

Thankfully, there has been a real change in Washington regarding government transparency. After taking office in January, President Barack Obama ordered government agencies to be more open.

In turn, Attorney General Eric Holder issued new policies that overturned many of the Bush administration’s restrictive rules on public records.

Now it is Congress’ turn. Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, are sponsoring a bill that would require Congress to clearly state exemptions to public records laws instead of burying them. That is a fine start, but Congress should provide a little transparency of its own. It should require a public debate — and a full explanation of its reasoning — any time it plans to exempt records from public disclosure. Congress should also repeal the 246 nonsensical exemptions.

Comments
Print
E-mail
Share
- Facebook
- Fark
- Digg
- Reddit
- Stumble
Tweet

Discussion: comments so far…

Comments are moderated by Las Vegas Sun editors. Our goal is not to limit the discussion, but rather to elevate it. Comments should be relevant and contain no abusive language. Comments that are off-topic, vulgar, profane or include personal attacks will be removed. Full comments policy. Additionally, we now display comments from trusted commenters by default. Those wishing to become a trusted commenter need to verify their identity or sign in with Facebook Connect to tie their Facebook account to their Las Vegas Sun account. For more on this change, read our story about how it works and why we did it.

Only trusted comments are displayed on this page. Untrusted comments have expired from this story.

No trusted comments have been posted.

By fremmasmind

Oct. 3, 2009

7:02 a.m.

Flag

Rewritting the laws as they go. An open government does not benefit the politician. This makes the citizens suspicious to what and why items are being held as secrets. If they want us to know I guess they'll tell us.
By LarryVegas

Oct. 3, 2009

7:13 a.m.

Flag

The only real change that there has been in Washington regarding government transparency is that President Obama ordered government agencies to be more open, except for the Obama White House
By larry5

Oct. 3, 2009

7:05 p.m.

Flag

Our government is out of control, being run by unscrupulous people - many of whom should rightfully be in prison. We need to begin the process of taking back our government. If we fail to act there will come a time when it will be too late.