Ensuring an informed citizenry: Examining the administration s efforts to improve open government

Ensuring an informed citizenry: Examining the administration's efforts to improve open government Prepared testimony

Karen Kaiser

General Counsel

The Associated Press,

on behalf of The Sunshine in Government Initiative,

before the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate

Chairman Grassley, Ranking Member Leahy, and members of the Committee,

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today about the Freedom of Information Act - FOIA. My name is Karen Kaiser and I am the general counsel for The Associated Press (AP). I am testifying today for the AP as well as the Sunshine in Government Initiative (SGI), a coalition of media associations of which AP is a member.

The Associated Press was formed in 1846 and it exists as a not-for-profit news cooperative. Its members are U.S. newspapers and broadcasters. AP operates in 280 locations in 110 countries, and serves a diverse array of newspapers, broadcasters and digital outlets. AP's core mission is straightforward: to inform the world. Our journalists frequently use the federal FOIA and state open records laws to keep the public informed of matters of critical importance.

The Sunshine in Government Initiative was formed nearly 10 years ago to promote policies and practices that ensure our government is open, accessible and accountable. SGI members are committed to helping address FOIA's obstacles with bipartisan, common-sense ways FOIA can work better for agencies and the public.

In addition to AP, SGI members include the American Society of News Editors, Association of Alternative Newsmedia, National Association of Broadcasters, National Newspaper Association, Newspaper Association of America, Online News Association, Radio Television Digital News Association, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and Society of Professional Journalists.

Mr. Chairman, we appreciate your longstanding commitment to making federal agencies more open and responsive to the public, and we appreciate the chance to speak today about the state of transparency in the U.S. as well as to suggest ways to improve the process by which the public is able to access government records.

I would like to start by making a few points about the critical importance of preserving openness and transparency for government information. FOIA is a vital tool by which the public can learn what its government is up to; it is the means by which any citizen can learn what public officials are doing, how tax dollars are being spent, and what decisions are being made. FOIA opens the government to the public, and it is through that transparency that we are able to achieve accountability - a core element of our democracy.

The Associated Press is committed to this principle of access and is a leading and aggressive advocate of transparency and accountability in government. Requesting public records and fighting for access around the world has long been part of AP's DNA. Most years, our journalists file many hundreds if not more than a thousand requests under both the federal FOIA and state open records laws around the country. These requests result in important stories that the public would otherwise not have known. Here are just a few examples:

An AP FOIA request to the Federal Emergency Management Agency showed that thousands of people who received government aid after Superstorm Sandy may be forced to give some or all of that money back, through no fault of their own, more than two years after the disaster.

AP obtained records from the Veterans Affairs Department (VA) showing that VA doctors had determined that a gunman who later killed 12 people had no mental health issues despite serious problems and encounters with police during the same period.

AP submitted public records requests to agencies in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. military for an investigation revealing that at least 786 children died of abuse or neglect in the United States in a six-year span while they or their families had open cases with child protection agencies.

An AP FOIA request to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) revealed efforts by the St. Louis County Police Department to restrict airspace during the violent street protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in order to keep away news helicopters.

AP again used federal and state open records laws this year to investigate airfield perimeter security breaches at the top 30 airports by passenger volume in the United States. While requests to the Transportation Safety Administration remain outstanding, data obtained from the FAA and state agencies exposed significant security lapses at airports around the country.

These stories - and the accountability and changes that followed from AP's reporting - would not have been achieved without reliance on our country's robust freedom of information laws and the principles of transparency that are the backbone of those laws.

At the same time, obtaining documents through FOIA remains a slow and difficult process, and one which unfortunately is becoming increasingly arduous to use. Despite promises of greater transparency at the outset of this Administration, most agencies are not abiding by their obligations of openness under the law. We are witnessing a breakdown in the system - both on the procedural front, in the form of continual delays and agency non-responsiveness, and on the substantive front, with the vast over-use of exemptions and redactions.

A few examples are illustrative:

Shortly after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing over the South China Sea in March 2014, AP asked the Pentagon's top satellite imagery unit, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, for records showing what the U.S. was doing to help the search. Agencies are required to give at least a preliminary response to such questions withi

LINK:	http://www.ap.org/Content/Press-Release/2015/Ensuring-an-informed-citi...
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