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08/15/2018

Colorado AG Ignores CORA Request Citing Active Litigation, Setting Potentially Dangerous Precedent

The Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) requires nearly all public records be made available to the public except for a few exceptions. But, according to the Colorado Department of Law, if an individual or entity is in litigation with the state, they’re no longer allowed to utilize CORA to secure any public documents.

Cause of Action Institute (CoA Institute) represents the TABOR Foundation and three other plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the state of Colorado and several state agencies challenging the constitutionality of the state’s Hospital Provider Charge, which the state imposes on Colorado hospitals to increase Medicaid funding from the federal government. Although some documents from the government have been provided to the plaintiffs in discovery, CoA Institute also filed a CORA request for records that should, in part or full, be released under CORA.

In response, the state of Colorado’s Department of Law stated that it had already provided all documents responsive to the CORA request in discovery, but it also took the position that it need not respond at all to the CORA request because of the ongoing litigation.

In our view, the state’s response misapplies the applicable law and, if left unchallenged, could establish a dangerous precedent as it relates to transparency and the use of CORA.  In other words, if the position taken by the Colorado Department of Law is adopted in other matters, entities that have ongoing litigation before the state could be prevented from using CORA to supplement and investigate the facts relevant to their cases. This anti-transparency policy has obvious negative implications for media outlets and government watchdog organizations to conduct their vital work.

Matt Frendewey is the Director of Communications at Cause of Action Institute.

 

Resources:

Click here to visit the TABOR project page.
Click here to download the original CORA records request and subsequent denial letter.
Click here to download CoA’s response to the CORA request denial letter.

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08/2/2018

New Website Documents Fraud & Corruption from EB-5 Immigration Program

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Aug. 2, 2018 – Today, Cause of Action Institute (“CoA Institute”) launched a new website www.EndEB5.org, documenting  questionable investments and investigations relating to the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program (“EB-5”) and the Regional Center Program. As the Cause of Action’s website reveals, the EB-5 program is ripe for fraud, corruption, can pose a national security threat, and provide questionable value to taxpayers and the U.S. economy. The website launched with more than a dozen examples of questionable investment. The organization has identified more than 50 examples and will release more troubling investments over the next two weeks.

CoA Institute created the website in response to Sen. Diane Feinstein asking the director of the program for a list of “shady programs.” The director didn’t have a list of “shady programs,” so CoA Institute put one together. As Congress weighs whether to extend or allow the Regional Center Program component of the EB-5 program to expire, CoA Institute urges Congress to review this website and recognize the severe flaws in the EB-5 program and let it expire on Sept. 30.

John J. Vecchione, president and CEO of CoA Institute, issued the following statement:

“The EB-5 Program faces legitimate scrutiny due to allegations that it’s become ripe for fraud and corruption and become a pay-to-play scheme. As our research illustrates, EB-5 and the Regional Center Program amounts to a pay-to-play scheme that enriches questionable actors who defraud investors and visa seekers and poses a threat to national security. We urge Congress to review the cases we have identified and allow this program to expire.”

BACKGROUND & HOW IT WORKS:

  • The Immigration Act of 1990 created EB-5 and permits foreign nationals to apply for a conditional visa by making a $1,000,000 investment in an American business that creates at least 10 jobs.
  • Alternatively, a visa-seeker can invest $500,000 in a “targeted employment area” (rural or area of high unemployment) to satisfy the visa requirement.
  • In 1992, the “Regional Center Program” was created to allow pre-approved third parties to pool EB-5 investments from foreign nationals toward American development projects.
  • The Regional Center Program is a source of much of the fraud in EB-5 Immigrant Investor program.
  • CoA Institute has found numerous cases where individuals who controlled a pre-approved Regional Center Program, use the program to collect huge sums in “investments” and fees from individuals seeking a visa, only to use the funds not to create jobs in the U.S. but to fund their lavish lifestyle.

On June 19, 2018, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on EB-5 with Lee Francis Cissna, Director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”), the agency responsible for the program. In this hearing, when Senator Feinstein asked Director Cissna for a list of “shady investments” the agency has found while investigating fraud in this program, Cissna stated he was unable to produce one.

In response, CoA has begun tracking and identifying examples of fraud or other questionable investments made through the EB-5 program. The website includes 13 examples and CoA Institute expects to release as many as 50 examples of questionable investments under the EB-5 project files page, detailing projects that have been proven to be fraudulent and failed to provide the proposed economic benefit.

The countless documented instances of fraud and corruption developed through this program have pushed the EB-5 program far beyond the point of corrective legislative reform. CoA Institute will continue to publish findings on this website as Congress decides whether to allow the program to expire on September 30.

About Cause of Action Institute

Cause of Action Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, dedicated to providing government oversight, transparency and advocating for economic freedom and individual opportunity advanced by honest, accountable, and limited government.

Media Contact:

Matt Frendewey
matt.frendewey@causeofaction.org
202-499-4231

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07/6/2018

OMB Confirms Agencies Required to Disclose Earmarks, Declines to Enforce

The White House Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) has confirmed that all executive branch agencies are required to disclose attempts by congressional and other outside force to influence the merit-based decision-making process for federal spending.  These efforts to earmark federal spending must be disclosed on agency websites within thirty days of their receipt.  But OMB has refused to issue new guidelines directing agencies to comply with the rule.

OMB’s reaffirmation came in a letter during litigation declining Cause of Action Institute (“CoA Institute”) and Demand Progress’s 2015 petition for rulemaking that asked the agency to enforce President George W. Bush’s Executive Order 13,457.

Background

In 2008, during the congressional debate over the earmark ban, President Bush issued EO 13,457, both to take a position in the ongoing debate and in an attempt to foreclose members of Congress from evading the ban by going directly to agencies.  Part of the order relied on transparency as a tool to dissuade these “executive branch earmarks” by requiring agencies to publish efforts to influence their decision making on their website within thirty days of receiving such communications.  The order also directed agencies not to fund these “non-statutory” earmarks.  Shortly after, OMB issued a memorandum instructing agencies how to comply with the order while implementing recent appropriations law.

CoA Institute had concerns that agencies were not complying with the order and conducted an investigation into which agencies were properly disclosing executive branch earmarks; only the Departments of Justice and Energy had published any meaningful content on their website.

In 2015, CoA Institute joined with Demand Progress and asked President Obama’s White House to depoliticize federal spending decisions by upholding the order.  We filed a petition for rulemaking asking the Obama OMB “to issue a rule ensuring the continuing force and effect of Executive Order 13457[.]”

In November 2017, after two years of not receiving a response, CoA Institute sued OMB over its failure to act on the petition.  With a new administration now in the White House, we urged President Trump’s OMB to issue updated guidance ensuring that agencies followed the order and disclosed earmarking efforts.

OMB Declines Petition, Confirms Executive Order Still in Effect

Due to the lawsuit, OMB has finally responded.  Although OMB declined to issue a new memorandum, it confirmed that “EO 13457 Remains In Force [because] No Executive Order has been issued that displaces, alters, or withdraws EO 13457 and [because] OMB is also not aware of any judicial decision vacating EO 13457.”


Therefore, agencies are still obligated both to refuse to fund non-statutory earmarks and disclose any attempts to influence their decisions within thirty days.  The Trump Administration, however, refuses to make them live up to their responsibilities.

James Valvo is Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor at Cause of Action Institute.  You can follow him on Twitter @JamesValvo.

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06/26/2018

GAO Report Highlights Agencies Failing to Implement the FOIA

A report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) provides alarming details about the dearth of agency efforts to fully implement the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”).  GAO previewed a draft of its report in March 2018 when its Director of Information Technology Management Issues, David Powner, testified at a hearing on FOIA compliance before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.  At the time, GAO published a concurrent report on how federal courts regularly fail to refer cases to the Office of Special Counsel (“OSC”) to determine whether disciplinary action is warranted in instances where officials have acted arbitrarily or capriciously in withholding records.  (Cause of Action Institute’s (“CoA Institute”) commentary on that issue can be found here.)  Yesterday’s report finalizes GAO’s findings and incorporates feedback from the eighteen agencies in the sample subject to the audit.

Many Agencies Have Failed to Update Regulations and Appoint Chief FOIA Officers

One aspect of GAO’s audit involved reviewing whether the eighteen agencies properly implemented various requirements introduced by the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 and the OPEN Government Act of 2007.  Those amendments to the FOIA require agencies, inter alia, to designate chief FOIA officers, publish timely and comprehensive regulations, and update response letters to indicate things such as an extended, 90-day appeal period.  GAO also evaluated what efforts were underway by the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Information Policy to develop a government-wide FOIA portal.

The chart above, which is taken from the GAO report, encapsulates some of the unfortunate findings.  Even though it is a statutory requirement, five of the eighteen agencies have not designated a chief FOIA officer in line with applicable requirements (e.g., appointing a senior official at the Assistant Secretary or equivalent level).  Chief FOIA officers are responsible for monitoring agency-wide compliance with the FOIA, making recommendations for improving FOIA processing, assessing the need for regulatory revisions each year, and serving as a liaison with the Department of Justice Office of Information Policy, the Office of Government Information Services, and the Chief FOIA Officers Council.  It remains unclear why some agencies are reticent to comply with this aspect of the FOIA.

Another disturbing finding is that few agencies in the sample timely updated and published regulations to implement the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016.  At least five agencies have deficient regulations—such as the Department of State—or have not bothered to issue a preliminary rulemaking—such as the White House Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”).  Agencies offered several reasons for why they have not complied with the law, with most citing a lengthy internal review process.  The State Department explained that it had just finished updating its regulations before passage of the FOIA Improvement Act.  The U.S. African Development Foundation, however, claimed that it did not even need “to disclose information regarding fees in their regulation” because it “has not charged a fee for unusual circumstances.”

OMB’s failure to satisfy GAO’s criteria for proper FOIA regulations is unsurprising and indicative of a general disregard for regulatory compliance with the FOIA at the agency.  For example, for the past few years, CoA Institute has carefully tracked whether agency FOIA regulations have been updated to include the current statutory definition of a “representative of the news media.”  Prior to the D.C. Circuit’s landmark 2015 decision in Cause of Action v. Federal Trade Commission, many agencies relied on OMB’s Uniform Freedom of Information Fee Schedule and Guidelines to impose an “organized and operated” standard that deprived nascent media groups of preferential fee treatment.  The OMB Guidelines, which were written in 1987, have never been updated, despite requests from the FOIA Advisory Committee and the Archivist of the United States.  CoA Institute thus filed its own petition for rulemaking on the issue in June 2016, followed by a lawsuit last November after OMB failed to respond.

Agencies Have Made Little Progress on FOIA Backlogs

Another aspect of GAO’s audit involved examining whether the eighteen agencies had made any headway in reducing their FOIA request backlog, as well as cataloging the statutes used in conjunction with Exemption 3 to withhold records from the public.  GAO found that few agencies had managed to reduce their outstanding backlog.  One major reason for the lack of progress on reducing backlogs was the failure of most agencies to implement “comprehensive plans” laying any sort of strategy.  As for GAO’s catalogue of statues used to withhold information exempt as a matter of law, the most commonly cited provisions were 8 U.S.C. § 1202(f), which concerns records about the issuance or refusal of a visa, and 26 U.S.C. § 6103, which protects the confidentiality of tax returns and return information.

GAO’s audit is an important indication of how far many agencies must go to comply fully with the FOIA.  This is particularly true insofar as GAO’s findings can be generalized across the entire administrative state.  Congress, the transparency community, and the American public must exert even greater pressure on Executive Branch agencies to meet their obligations under the law and to improve their commitment to open government.

Ryan P. Mulvey is Counsel at Cause of Action Institute

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05/14/2018

Politics Clouding Criticism of the EPA’s Heightened Sensitive Review FOIA Procedures

Last week, a report from Politico revealed that the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) maintains a burdensome “sensitive review” process for Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) requests concerning Administrator Scott Pruitt’s activities.  According to internal sources, officials within the Office of the Administrator have “reviewed documents collected for most or all FOIA requests regarding [Pruitt’s] activities[.]”  The Politico report further claims that this “high-level vetting” has increased, as compared with the policies and practices introduced during the Obama years.  “This does look like the most burdensome review process that I’ve seen documented,” argued Nate Jones from National Security Archive.

It is true that the Trump Administration has enhanced sensitive review processes at the EPA.  Other agencies have witnessed a similar expansion of sensitive review, as Cause of Action Institute’s investigation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration demonstrates.  But it would be a mistake—as I argued last December—to think that the Obama White House was any better at avoiding FOIA politicization.  The EPA has a long and terrible track record for anti-transparency behavior.  Consider the agency’s blatant weaponization of fee waivers.  According to data compiled by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and reported by Reason and The Washington Examiner, the Obama EPA regularly denied public interest fee waivers to organizations critical of the agency’s regulatory activities and the White House’s policy agenda.  By contrast, left-leaning groups nearly always (92% of the time) received fee waivers.

In addition to this viewpoint discrimination, the EPA suffered other transparency scandals.  Former Administrator Lisa Jackson infamously used a fictional alter ego—“Richard Windsor”—to conduct agency business on an undisclosed government email account.  And the EPA “misplaced” over 5,000 text messages sent or received by former Administrator Gina McCarthy and other top officials.  The Obama-era EPA also tolerated the widespread use of personal email accounts by high-ranking bureaucrats, a practice that significantly frustrated public access to agency records and proved to foreshadow or parallel other FOIA scandals at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service, and, most famously, the State Department.  It is noteworthy that, in March of 2015, The Guardian—hardly a right-leaning paper—could seriously ponder: “Is the EPA having a transparency crisis?”

The history speaks for itself: the EPA under Scott Pruitt is not a new or unique threat to transparent government.  The litany of FOIA abuses at the EPA and other agencies under both Presidents Obama and Trump demonstrate that we should fight the tendency to view the problem of FOIA politicization through a partisan lens.  “Sensitive review” matured as a practice in the Obama Administration, and is continuing under President Trump, but there are institutional motivations for any and all bureaucrats, regardless of party affiliation, to frustrate the disclosure of records, particularly if they are embarrassing or raise the specter of media attention.

According to EPA Inspector General reports published in August 2015 and January 2011, the EPA’s FOIA regulations allow political appointees—including the Chief FOIA Officer and authorized disclosure official in the Office of the Administrator—to participate in approving requests and redacting records.  Is it any wonder that an agency follows its own long-established rules for processing requests it deems “sensitive”?  So long as the law gives the agency an opportunity to violate the spirit of the FOIA, the agency will take advantage of that discretion, even if it means violating statutory timelines for responding to requesters.

When Administrator Pruitt directed his staff to involve itself with the disclosure of records, he continued a tradition of obstructing the public’s right to access government information.  He deserves the criticism he has received.  But focusing on Administrator Pruitt’s (or President Trump’s) regulatory agenda, or his personal views on hot-button topics like global warming, obscures the underlying problem and makes it more difficult to reach consensus on how to address the real issues.  The FOIA and implementing regulations, for one, need to prohibit “sensitive review,” or at least provide serious restrictions on its implementation.  And guidance from the Department of Justice should address the troubling aspects that sensitive review can present.  This should be part of a solution that everyone who believes in transparency can accept.

Ryan P. Mulvey is Counsel at Cause of Action Institute

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04/12/2018

CoA Institute Calls for EPA Watchdog Investigation into the Use of Unauthorized Electronic Messaging and Web-Based Email Apps on Agency Devices

Washington, D.C. – Cause of Action Institute (“CoA Institute”) wrote yesterday to the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) to request an investigation into the unauthorized use of electronic messaging and web-based email applications on agency-furnished and taxpayer-funded mobile devices, including iPhones and iPads. CoA Institute’s request follows the recent release under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) of a contractor-generated report that proves EPA employees installed at least sixteen different messaging applications, including Facebook Messenger and Google Hangouts, in contravention of official agency policy.  EPA employees also installed personal email programs, such as AOL and Yahoo Mail, on their government phones.  The OIG previously examined the use of two other encrypted messaging applications, “Signal” and “WhatsApp,” after CoA Institute opened its own investigation into allegations concerning the possible avoidance of records management laws.

 Cause of Action Institute Counsel Ryan Mulvey: “The newest details concerning the range of applications that EPA employees installed on their taxpayer-funded phones and tablets raise serious concerns.  Beyond the fact that many of these applications should never have been found on a government phone because of their personal nature, the presence of sixteen different electronic messaging applications raises doubts about the EPA’s compliance with record preservation rules.  All work-related communications created or received on a personal email account, or an electronic messaging program like Facebook Messenger, should have been preserved for disclosure to the public.  The EPA Inspector General must examine this matter and consider what steps the agency should take to rectify any deficiencies in meeting its record preservation obligations.”

Shortly after President Trump took office, Politico reported that a small group of EPA employees were using an encrypted messaging application, called “Signal,” to discuss ways to prevent incoming political appointees from implementing the new Administration’s policy agenda.  CoA Institute opened an investigation and, over the past year, has slowly pieced together details about the Signal scandal.

In response to its first FOIA lawsuit, the EPA acknowledged that there was an “open law enforcement” investigation.  Then, records released to CoA Institute revealed how an EPA contractor “scanned” most agency-furnished devices for the different applications that had been installed by employees.  That scan, which was requested “orally” by the OIG, was conducted with a software tool known as “Mobile Device Management,” or “MDM.”  As part CoA Institute’s second FOIA lawsuit, the EPA disclosed the contractor-generated report, as well as other documents.  A summary of the report, which consists of a list running ninety-six pages long, identifies all of the applications installed on most agency-furnished devices.

In addition to Signal and WhatsApp, at least another sixteen applications with electronic messaging capabilities were used by EPA employees, along with three email programs.  To the extent the OIG was unaware of these other messaging applications, further inquiries are necessary, as the use of these applications raise issues relating to federal records management.  Moreover, although the OIG has reported that the EPA disabled the ability of many iPhone and iPad users to download the “Apple Store app,” and thus to install unauthorized applications, it is unknown whether all unapproved messaging applications have been deleted or, alternatively, whether adequate procedures have been put in place so that the EPA can meet its recordkeeping obligations.

CoA Institute’s April 11, 2018 letter to the EPA Inspector General is available HERE.

For information regarding this press release, please contact Nichole Wilson: Nichole.wilson@causeofaction.org

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