The Freedom of Information Act

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is both an important and overrated piece of legislation. Theoretically, it is intended to make our government open and accessible to the public but that theory is counteracted by the reality that the government does not really want a bunch of pesky people poking around to see what it is actually doing.

Take, for example, the recent experience of Buckingham Township, Pennsylvania when they attempted to get documents relating to Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) documents relating to a proposed expressway. FHWA said they didn’t have the requested information but PennDOT did. PennDOT said they didn’t have it either but the Delaware Valley Planning Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) did. DVRPC said that the documents weren’t theirs to release and that the township had to go to the FHWA to get them. Instead, the township went to court and a federal judge ordered their release. FHWA, PennDOT and the DVRPC “complied” by handing over more than 20,000 pages of computer printouts which were largely unlabeled and out of order. Fortunately, the judge did not see the humor in their actions and ordered that the information be produced in a useable fashion. The bottom line is that it took three trips to court and months to get documents that should have been readily available.

Below is the Freedom of Information Act as well as a link to the ACLU’s site that contains some very helpful suggestions on making the best use of it. Please note that each of the federal agencies has FOIA information on their web sites but we suspect that it is largely there for window dressing and to create the illusion that the public’s rights are being studiously protected. That may seem to be a decidedly negative viewpoint, however, once you have tried to get anything out of them you will understand our reluctance to heap praise on them for their efforts.

Freedom of Information Act

ACLU – Using the Freedom of Information Act