Does Bloomberg have anything substantive here?
Essentially, they requested a whole bunch of stuff from the administration under FOIA, and got stonewalled or delayed on a goodly amount.
It bothers me. I’m not saying Republicans would do better, but is there something to this? Is this a case where the administration is doing a bad job, or is it spin about a bunch of nothing?
I think it’s bad, and certainly hoped for better.
FOIA delays have been a huge problem for years - the backlog is sizable. It’s an area where the default should be disclosure, not obfuscation. Unfortunately, “good government” policies don’t move voters.
Well, for their little experiment (sending requests to 57 agencies) to mean anything, I think you’d first have to get some statistics on the number of FOIA requests received by each agency per day and how long each one takes to respond to. Because there’s a fundamental disconnect between wanting smaller government and expecting rapid response. If it takes 2 hours to respond to a FOIA request, and an agency receives 8/day, then you’d need 2 full-time employees just to handle them. Are there fees associated with the FOIA act request to defray those expenses?
Let’s assume it takes only 2 hours to fulfill a request for information regarding out of state travel for each executive (seems low to me).
Then Bloomberg’s little experiment cost the taxpayer 114 hours or pretty close to three man weeks of effort. And that’s just one of thousands of requests received every year. Seems like it’s not testing transparency but staffing levels.
FWIW I designed the FOIA system for the FBI and the DEA. I don’t know what other agencies use or how they fulfill requests. I do know pretty much all of them drag their feet whenever they want to and use a huge variety of reasons to deny, partially fulfill, ignore, or make mistakes, etc. when they get requests.
As far as number of requests, the FBI gets thousands of them and have a large staff (20-25?) devoted to nothing else. I think the average request, (once it makes it to the pile) takes about 10 days. Requests for the Kennedy assainations once took 3 full time people just for those requests. Marilyn Monroe had a devoted staffer as well.
Disclaimer: This was a few years ago and I have moved on.
Lanzy, can you give us some idea of the time frame of your involvement with this issue? I’m wondering if different staffing levels between then and now could be a factor.
Like Jas09, I had hoped for better. I’m sure transparency is one of those things that sounds a lot better when you are on the outside than it turns out to be on the inside.
If you want to know what Obama thinks of government transparency, just look at how his administration has dealt with CIA torturers. Of everyone who used or knew of the use of torture, the only man he wants to prosecute is the whistleblower, John Kiriakou.
Since this is the Elections forum, I assume the OP wants to know if there is something to this in the context of hurting Obama in November. Let’s assume that Bloomberg has uncovered the greatest “reverse transparency” scandal in the history of the United States, nay, the world, an unveiling of nefarious, scurrilous, and reprehensible behavior so great, that it truly boggles the mind. The answer to the question would still be an unequivocal “no.” Obama will not be harmed one single percentage point, because in the context of other issues that actually have an effect on people’s lives, nobody cares about this.
I put it here because it didn’t quite seem like a great debate somehow.
But I am interested beyond how it will affect the election. The red base will naturally think this is worse-than-Hitler, while the blue base will see it as nothing (and btw Bloomberg is evil).
I’m trying to get fresh perspective. I’m just trying to understand FOIA, and if Obama really is stonewalling, and if he is trying to keep too much secret.