Open government laws receive bipartisan support in Congress

It has been a good week for the cause of more open government, with promising signs on the state and national levels that at least some elected officials understand the importance of the public’s right to know what its government does.

Nationally, Congress overwhelmingly passed bipartisan legislation that toughens the 40-year-old Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and increases penalties on agencies that don’t comply with open records requests. This marked the first makeover of FOIA in a decade and would go a long way toward bringing back some balance to what has been a disturbing trend toward secrecy in the federal government in general and the Bush Administration in particular.

Among the improvements to the act: a 20-day deadline for responding to FOIA requests; refund of search and duplication fees for noncommercial requesters if the deadline is not met; a system for media and the public to track the status of FOIA requests.

This bill is a strong step toward keeping our federal government open and accountable.

Meanwhile, it was good to hear that state Sen. Randy McNally is hesitant to sponsor legislation that would change the state’s open government laws. We still feel the proposed changes would be atrociously damaging to the state’s open government laws and should be strongly rejected.