While the House Committee on Oversight and Government reform holds day 2 of its FOIA hearings, there are other stories in the FOIA universe.
EENews has this on the financial agencies attempts to change language in current FOIA legislation. Briefly, the agencies that are supposed to monitor the financial industry is worried that the pending legislation will make it less likely that those it monitors, audits, investigates and (sometimes) charges with financial crimes will share information with theses agencies if the legislation passes. The agencies believe (wrongly in my opinion) that the changes in the law will bring about additional FOIA litigation that will possibly cause some of this information to be released. Of course, as the Exemptions that affect these issues are not changing under the legislation, this argument/concern may probably more about blocking changes to the FOIA for the purpose of blocking changes to the FOIA.
The House GOP has what it believes is a way to fix the FOIA problems at the State Department according to the National Journal. It would reduce operational funds to State until it fixes its FOIA and email problems. Of course this is silly for a number of reasons. FOIA operating funds aren't given by Congress, and State can just cut its FOIA program more. The way to improve FOIA operations and email retention issues is to provide more money directly to these programs as well as to require operational change of top tier FOIA and records management staff. State has had more than a few top FOIA staff come and go over the past few years and Congress hasn't looked into this issue.
Finally, the White House has a great idea according to the Hill - make Congress subject to the FOIA. Many state legislatures are subject to their state's open records law, so why shouldn't Congress?