Prolonged dispute keeps new FOIA office only on paper

Nine months after passage of a bill creating it, an office meant to help set policy on the Freedom of Information Act remains in limbo due to a dispute between Congress and the Bush administration over its location and the lack of a standard appropriations process.

The plight of the Office of Government Information Services, which might ultimately receive only about $1 million a year for a small staff, continues to draw concern. "There has been no movement on establishing OGIS," House Oversight and Government Reform Information Policy Subcommittee Chairman William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., said Wednesday at a hearing on the office's status.

"Funds will not available until 2009," Clay said. "Members are concerned that delays in structuring the office will increase the backlog of FOIA requests and undermine the purpose of establishing OGIS."

A bill updating FOIA practices, signed last year by President Bush, requires that the office be placed in the National Archives and Records Administration. The office would include an ombudsman and would try to address FOIA backlogs and speed up resolution of FOIA requests across government.

But OMB included language in the fiscal 2009 budget that would shift the FOIA office's functions to the Justice Department. OMB has argued that the department already does the work proposed for the new office, making the move to the Archives redundant.

Backers of the FOIA bill, including Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, have denounced the proposed move as an attempt to undermine the bill's intent.

Earlier this year, Leahy, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, put language restoring funding for the office in a spending bill covering the National Archives.

But with Congress eyeing a continuing resolution and unlikely to pass fiscal 2009 appropriations for most agencies this year, Leahy lacks near-term means to put funding for the office in the Archives, a spokeswoman said.

The Archives, meanwhile, is not moving to create the office while Congress and the White House remain at odds, Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein told the subcommittee.

Weinstein, who also serves as chief administrator of the National Archives, said that before passage of the FOIA bill, his office resisted taking on the job because it does "not relate to our core mission" of preserving federal records. He also cited concerns that the office will not be adequately funded.

"We have not sought ownership of the tasks involved," Weinstein said, while noting his agency would do the job if required to.