Reaction To Issa Oversight Request

Reaction to House Government Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa's (R-Ca) request to all government agencies for detailed lists of all FOIA requests for the past five years has drawn a strong negative reaction from a number of places

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md), Issa's Democratic counterpart on the panel has bashed the request as wasteful and costly to the federal government.

A number of others worry in this NY Times article that the broad scope of the request is creepy and poses civil liberty concerns. AMERICAblog worries about the request as well.  Finally, journalist Russ Baker breaks down the request and why some are concerned with Issa.

I may be accused of being naive, but I don't think Issa has a dark sinister motive behind the request such as outing individuals or groups for making too many FOIA requests.  I take him at his word that he wants to improve FOIA operations in the government.  However, it is clear he wants to score political points and put the current administration in the hot seat (I note that he and/or his other GOP representatvie never asked for the same type of information when they were in charge of Congress during the majority of the George W. Bush administration).  Finally, I think the request is a bit too broad-- so broad in fact, that Issa's own staff will be hampered by the amount of information they receive.  I'd rather see hearings with folks from OMB and DOJ (both political and career) on the hot seat answering why they haven't done more to implement the President's FOIA policy.

Comments

[Bryan Hochstein]

It's really not that hard of a request to fulfill. Rep. Cummings is just afraid of what will be learned.

Back in September, I received the Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) FOIA log via email. It was a simple export to excel.

In that log I was able to verify some of my requests that went unfulfilled and even one that was denied although I never was told why. I have even cataloged 44 emails with one request that took over 7 months to just get a partial release.

I would be happy to share the information with Rep Issa's office. It would be interesting to see if OPM gives him something different.

Grant you that Issa' request may seem broad, but it really isn't that hard to quickly filter through the data for some broad themes of the data. Especially, since most agencies have some form of tracking.

[Nate Jones]

http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/document-friday-for-darrell-issa-an-eighteen-year-old-foia-request/