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Obama Pushes Access

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 25, 2009

As a new administration settles into its offices in Washington, America awaits the actions of the White House and federal agencies on a host of challenges facing our nation at home and abroad. Whatever these actions turn out to be, and whether they meet with success or failure, it's vitally important that the American people have access to how governmental decisions are made, and by whom. On this front, at least, there's already good news.

And on his first full day in office, President Barack Obama announced that he would instruct federal agencies to view Freedom of Information Act requests with an eye toward fulfilling them, rather than toward withholding information.

The Freedom of Information Act was signed into law by a reluctant President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966. Put simply, the law is meant to provide citizens with timely access to government information.

The history of administrations' compliance with FOIA follows an uneven but generally downward trend. Ask those who've been filing requests for a long time, though, and you'll find widespread sentiment that FOIA compliance got substantially worse during President George W. Bush's administration. With the law requiring timely response but setting no penalties for agencies that do not reply in a timely manner, foot-dragging became the apparent blanket strategy for dealing with those who would dare pry into the government's business.

When announcing the changes he is calling for, Obama said these steps would not, in and of themselves, "make government as honest and transparent as it needs to be." He's right about that, too. More needs to be done, from extending FOIA to cover Congress to rolling back Bush administration changes that would make it harder to access the records of past presidents.

These are things that the new president and Congress can and should do to, in the president's words, "make government trustworthy in the eyes of the American people."

Dan Rather's column is distributed by Hearst Newspapers.

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