Read the full story in The Hill»
A new Interior Department rule could make it harder for news organizations and nonprofits to get public information from the government.
Filed to the Federal Register between Christmas and New Year’s Day on Friday, the suggested rule would change the way the agency must file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by relaxing timelines by which information must be handled and increasing the burden on requesters to be specific in what they are looking for.
The changes, critics say, will ultimately make it harder for people to get the government documents they are seeking and could add to the already high number of FOIA lawsuits against the Trump administration.
“I think this is a problem that they have created for themselves, by failing to be transparent, by failing to make documents available to the public, and this is going to make it worse,” said Nada Culver, senior counsel at The Wilderness Society.
“They are depriving the American people of their right to know what the government is doing — they are only going to cause themselves more fights and more litigation.”
The rule change, quietly submitted to the Federal Register during a government shutdown without any public press release by the agency, changes many aspects of which FOIAs will be processed in the future.
