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07/31/2018

Millennium Challenge Corporation Adopts CoA Institute’s Recommendations for FOIA Regulations

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (“MCC”) finalized a rule at the end of last week implementing new Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) regulations and incorporated important revisions proposed by Cause of Action Institute (“CoA Institute”) in a comment submitted to the agency in March 2018.  The MCC is a small agency tasked with delivering foreign aid to combat global poverty.

CoA Institute made several recommendations in response to the MCC’s proposed rulemaking.  Most importantly, we urged the agency to remove outdated “organized and operated” language from its proposed definition of a “representative of the news media.”  Such language has been used in the past to deny news media requester status—and favorable fee treatment—to government watchdog organizations, including CoA Institute.  For example, CoA Institute sued the Federal Trade Commission, and took its case all the way to the D.C. Circuit, just to get the agency to acknowledged that its FOIA fee regulations were outdated and that it had improperly denied CoA Institute a fee reduction.

In deciding that case, the D.C. Circuit issued a landmark decision clarifying proper fee category definitions and the application of fees in FOIA cases.  CoA Institute cited this case to the MCC and the agency took heed of the current case law, removing the outdated “organized and operated” standard from its final rule.

CoA Institute also asked the MCC to remove language directing FOIA officials to read agency regulations “in conjunction with” fee guidelines published by the White House Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) in 1987.  Portions of the OMB guidance, which are actually the source of the “organized and operated” standard, are simply no longer authoritative—they conflict with the statutory text, as amended by Congress, and judicial authorities, including Cause of Action v. Federal Trade Commission.

Continued reliance on the OMB guidelines threatens to cause confusion.  In 2016, the FOIA Advisory Committee and the Archivist of the United States both called on OMB to update its fee guidelines.  CoA Institute also filed a petition for rulemaking on the issue, and is currently litigating the matter in federal court.  Although the MCC has decided not to alter its reference to the OMB guidelines (and did not provide an explanation for rejecting that portion of CoA Institute’s comment), the fact remains that no agency can rely on OMB’s superseded directives.

Since the passage of the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016, CoA Institute has commented on twenty-six separate rulemakings.  Of the twelve that have been finalized, CoA Institute has succeeded in convincing seven agencies to abandon the outdated “organized and operated” standard in favor of a proper definition of “representative of the news media,” including the following:

Some agencies, including the National Credit Union Administration and the Federal Reserve, choose to defer on CoA Institute’s recommendations and have promised to propose further rulemakings in the near future to address outstanding fee issues.

CoA Institute’s successful comment to MCC is another small step in our efforts to provide effective and transparent oversight of the administrative state and, more specifically, to ensure agency compliance with the FOIA.

Ryan P. Mulvey is Counsel at Cause of Action Institute

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01/2/2013

New Filings in the NARA Lawsuit

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08/17/2012

WSJ Blog Reports on CoA’s NARA Lawsuit

Read the full article here. Wall Street Journal

“A government accountability group filed a lawsuit on August 14 against the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for withholding records pertaining to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) and claiming that these records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.”

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08/15/2012

Cause of Action Sues For Public Release of Records Revealing the Cause of the Financial Crisis

CAUSE OF ACTION SUES FOR PUBLIC RELEASE OF RECORDS REVEALING THE CAUSE OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS

National Archives Refuses to Grant Records Concerning Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Claims Records Are Not Subject to FOIA

WASHINGTON – Government accountability group Cause of Action (CoA) filed a lawsuit on August 14 against the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for wrongfully withholding records pertaining to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) and claiming that these records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

 

“The FCIC was created to examine the causes of the financial and economic crisis in the United States, an issue that impacted all Americans,” said Dan Epstein, executive director of Cause of Action. “At a time when the American public is still wondering what or who caused the financial crisis, the National Archives’ refusal to release these records keeps the American public in the dark.”

 

On October 3, 2011, CoA submitted a FOIA request to NARA for:

“[A]ll documents, including e-mail communications, memoranda, draft reports, and other relevant information and/or data contained in the records transfer of Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission documents stored at NARA to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform at the U.S. House of Representatives.”

 

On December 1, 2011, NARA denied CoA’s FOIA request on the grounds that FCIC records are not “agency records” that must be disclosed pursuant to FOIA’s disclosure provisions and that the FCIC established a five-year restriction on public access to FCIC records.

 

CoA has appealed this FOIA denial, only to be shut out once again by NARA.

 

“NARA has been in possession of these documents since February of 2011, so to claim that these records are not Agency documents is an obfuscation of the truth,” stated Karen Olea, senior counsel at Cause of Action. “Cause of Action is committed to pursuing these documents so that the American public can know what went into the report that helped shaped the national discussion about the financial crisis.”

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08/15/2012

Mother Jones: National Archives Sued Over Financial Crisis Documents

Read the full story here. Mother Jones

“Cause of Action, a Washington transparency watchdog that filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the FCIC documents last year, thinks the American public should not have to wait that long. Late Tuesday, the group sued NARA in federal court in Washington, DC, aiming to force the disclosure of thousands of pages of as-yet-unreleased documents.

“The FCIC had a big impact on the national discussion about what caused the financial crisis and all Americans have an interest in what really happened,” Mary Beth Hutchins, Cause of Action’s communications director, told Mother Jones. “We have an administration that from day one promised greater transparency in government, and what we’ve seen is that instead of having the public interest in mind, they’re bowing to the whims of this commission. It’s important that people be able to draw their own conclusions and judgments in addition to those the commission may have drawn from these documents.”

In the lawsuit, Cause of Action writes that NARA’s five-year restriction on the release of the documents (except for certain documents FCIC had pre-designated for release) is the same restriction that Phil Angelides, the commission’s Democratic chairman, advocated in a letter he sent to NARA in February 2011. But Cause of Action goes on to note that Peter Wallison, a Republican member of the commission, has said that he believes “the public should have access to all FCIC documents except those records provided to the FCIC on condition of confidentiality” and that he was “not even aware” of Angelides’ letter, “which expresses a position materially inconsistent with his own views.” (Hutchins said Wallison made those statements in phone conversations with Cause of Action’s legal team.)”

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