A Sunshine Week surprise: White House exempts executive office from records requests

WaPO- By Josh Hicks
(REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
The White House on Tuesday removed a longstanding government-transparency rule that the GeorgeW. Bush administration first opposed, exempting President Obama’s Office of Administration from records requests.
The move came during Sunshine Week, a time when transparency advocates push for a more open government and greater compliance with the Freedom of Information Act, a law that allows the public to access federal documents with limited exceptions.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on Tuesday characterized the rule change as a matter of cleaning up outdated regulations, noting that a federal court decided nearly six years ago that the Office of Administration is not subject to FOIA.
“It has no impact at all on the policy that we have maintained from the beginning to comply with the Freedom of Information Act when it’s appropriate,” Earnest said.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which lost the Bush-era FOIA lawsuit against the Office of Administration, criticized the White House for its decision, saying it reversed a decades-long practice of opening office’s files to the public.
“This step makes mockery of the administration’s commitment to transparency, especially given that it’s Sunshine Week,” CREW executive director Anne Weismann said in a statement on Tuesday. “Apparently they have abandoned even the appearance of transparency.”
Earnest said the timing of the rule change during Sunshine Week was unintentional. The action appeared in the Federal Register that day with a note indicating that the action was final, meaning it would take effect without a public-comment period.
The Office of Administration complied with FOIA requests for years before the Bush administration stopped the practice, prompting the CREW lawsuit. The Obama White House has not released any records from the office under FOIA, using the court decision to justify its policy.
President Obama promised to run the most transparent government in U.S. history, but the administration’s actions have created doubts about the pledge.
An Associated Press analysis found that government secrecy had increased during the Obama years, with the administration censoring or outright denying FOIA access more in 2013 than it had ever done before.
Earnest defended Obama’s commitment to openness, saying the rule change is “cleanly in line with the kind of priority that this administration has placed on transparency.” He also noted that the Obama White House was the first to release its visitor logs.
A recent analysis by the Center for Effective Government shows that the Obama administration improved access to information last year, with eight out of the 15 most FOIAd federal agencies improving their scores in the group’s annual report card.
Nonetheless, 10 agencies finished last year with unsatisfactory grades, earning less than 70 points out of a possible 100.