House looks to send FOIA reform to Obama’s desk

Legislation to expand the public’s access to open records is nearing President Obama’s desk. 

The House on Monday evening is slated to take up the Senate’s version of reform to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which the upper chamber passed in March.  

{mosads}The House approved its own version in January, too. But instead of merging the bills in a conference committee, the House has decided to take up the Senate version to send to the White House. 

Various agencies, including the Justice Department, have lobbied against the changes in previous years. But the White House said it would sign the bill after the Senate hashed out a deal to bring skeptical senators on board back in March. 

“If the president receives this bill, he’ll sign it,” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), one of the sponsors, said at the time. 

Congress has tried for years to make changes to the law used by reporters, researchers and the public. Both chambers passed their respective bills last Congress, but time ran out before they could be merged. 

The update would codify a so-called presumption of openness, which requires federal agencies and other parts of the government to adopt a policy that leans toward the public release of documents. Agencies would have to point to a specific “foreseeable harm” when withholding documents that would typically be exempt from public release.

Obama instructed agencies to adopt a similar model when he entered office, but critics say the government hasn’t lived up to that promise. Future presidents could also undo that policy without new legislation. 

The bill would also limit the government’s withholding of old documents related to the deliberative process. The legislation would bar agencies from using that exemption for documents that are more than 25 years old. 

The legislation would also create a single FOIA request portal for all agencies, make more documents available online and strengthen the government’s FOIA ombudsman. 

The original House bill had been seen as stronger than the Senate bill, but it had problems of its own for transparency advocates, including last-minute additions that exempted the intelligence community from some FOIA provisions.