Recently in FOIA Category

The list of White House visitors is now online and searchable. (Thanks to the FOI Advocate blog for flagging that.)

You might recall that we asked York County congressman Todd Platts for his visitors' list, and he said no.

But Obama's list, through July 31, is available -- although it is only a list of names that were requested. (Here's more on the White House's plans to release lists of visitors.)

Some names you might recognize from the list that's out now:

William Ayers, John Boehner, Newt Gingerich, Al Gore, Alan Greenspan, Jesse Jackson, Michael Jordan, Michael Moore, Denzel Washington, Serena Williams, Oprah Winfrey and Jeremiah Wright.

BUT. The Los Angeles Times reports the William Ayers that visited wasn't that William Ayers, and the Jeremiah Wright who visited wasn't that Jeremiah Wright. Same with fellows named Michael Jordan and Michael Moore, the White House told the Times. The White House said it was asked if people with those names visited, so it included those names in its release.

Here's a good Washington Post story about the list, who's on it and what's known about why they visited.

Bands like Pearl Jam and Nine Inch Nails (that's Trent Reznor at right) aren't happy their music may have been used to torture prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and they've filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get the song titles. Thanks to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press for flagging Washington Post and New York Times stories on that.

 I must say that's the first time I've heard of a FOIA request made by rock bands. It's part of an effort to put pressure on President Obama to follow through on his promise to close Guantanamo Bay.

Listening to NPR yesterday, I was blown away by the reporting done by young journalists involving a successful FOIA request. The FOIA'd documents led to an investigative story detailing the hazing and abuse of U.S. sailors in a canine unit at a base in Behrain.

Listen to the NPR version of the story, which summarizes the story so far. An excerpt:

Incidents ranged from spraying down uniformed personnel with hoses to directing sailors to simulate sex acts on videotape. ... The (independent Naval) investigation's findings, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and corroborated by Youth Radio's interviews, show the abuse was widespread in the unit, and in some cases sanctioned and instigated by its leadership.

The story came out of the news organization Youth Radio in Oakland, Calif., which teaches journalism to young people.

Youth Radio broke the story online and, since, the current commander of naval installations in Europe, Africa and Southwest Asia, Rear Admiral David Mercer, has ordered a review of the Navy's investigation. Youth Radio has also reported on another review that's been ordered, this time by the Chief of Naval Operations, the Navy's highest ranking officer and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The deadline for that report is Oct. 6.

The agency that audits federal defense contracts isn't doing a good enough job, according to another federal agency that reviewed its work. That resonates in York County because of the county's military contractors, including Gichner Shelter Systems of Dallastown, BAE Systems in West Manchester Township and General Dynamics in Red Lion.

The Project on Government Oversight lists General Dynamics as the fourth-largest defense contractor, with $18.5 billion in contracts, and BAE as the sixth-largest at $10.1 billion. The Daily Record/Sunday News has a web page dedicated to BAE news where you can get the latest news on the company's defense contracts and on the vehicles it builds.

 This from The Associated Press:

"Pentagon auditors face serious problems in their ability to oversee contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars, according to congressional investigators, and a key senator says the agency in charge needs to focus more on quality than speed.

The Government Accountability Office reviewed 69 audits and other cost-related assignments by the Defense Contract Audit Agency and found only four complied with government auditing standards."

More here.

The Project on Government Oversight has a fascinating Twitter stream out of today's Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on DCAA. Samples (these are separate tweets; they don't represent a single conversation during the hearing):

Lieberman: Should we be creating a totally independent auditing agency, Auditor General, for the govt overall? #DCAA

McCaskill (@clairecmc): What has happened here has been a capital crime #DCAA

Coburn: Are there any safeguards if #DCAA not doing their job? GAO: We don't have any

When Todd Platts, York County's congressman, denied
our open-records request for a list of people who'd visited his office, one of his answers to our questions piqued my curiosity.

We asked that if people couldn't see who visited his office, how would we keep track of which lobbyists were bending his ear? He replied, in part: "Lobbyists must file quarterly reports with the Clerk of the House .... disclosing their contacts with the House and Senate."

Whoa, I thought -- a list of lobbyists who had knocked on Platts' door was already out there; no need to get it from the Congressman himself.

So I went to the Clerk of the House's Web site. Sure enough, you can search online records for lobbyist activity. And you can see what lobbyists represent what clients -- for example, that the York City Sewer Authority registered a lobbyist in January with an interest in funding for sewer/water improvements; and that Wellspan Health registered a lobbyist in March 2008 to focus on, in part, "budget resolution provisions relating to medicare and medicaid funding and discretionary health care funding."

You can also see what their lobbying expenses were for a given time period, and even if they've made contributions to lawmakers.

But -- unless I'm missing it, and I am happy to be proven wrong here -- you can't see which lawmakers they've met with.

It was nice of Platts to point out that you can find out a lot about lobbyists online. Since we know that Platts doesn't accept PAC money, however, we'd really like to know which lobbyists have visited him, and concerning which issues. But, apparently, we can't know that.

Original documents from state and federal governments, courts, schools and other agencies have a new home on the York Daily Record/Sunday News' Web site. Instead of residing on the Full Disclosure open records page, they now have their own page.

You can get to them one of two ways:

The 'Reading Room' link on the Full Disclosure page

or

go directly to the 'Reading Room' page.

The documents are now organized by topic, so they're easier for you to look through and find what you want. If you have suggestions on how to make the page even easier to navigate, let me know. I plan to add dates to each entry soon.

 If you have documents you'd like to share online, let me know and we can get them on 'Reading Room' -- and we'll give you credit for digging them out. If you have ideas for documents you think we should get from an agency and put online, let me know. And feel free to link to the page for quick access. 

Links to news involving federal Freedom of Information Act:

• Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press joined news organizations in filing that urges U.S. Supreme Court not to review a lower court's decision that the FOIA "requires release of images of alleged abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan carried out by U.S. troops."
  
• Thanks to Charles N. Davis of The FOI Advocate blog for alerting us that Openthegovernment.org has released its FOIA scorecard. It assesses the end of the Bush administration and the beginning of the Obama administration. Davis breaks out some interesting facts; and you can get the whole report at the openthegovernment.org site.

The Project on Government Oversight says it has updated its resources page for the Freedom of Information Act. Among the additions is a report by the Congressional Research Service that includes the history of the act, and how the Bush and Obama administrations have interpreted it.

Obama started his administration with a strong endorsement of open records and government accountability, but has since made some decisions that run counter to that approach. We've blogged about them here.

This post -- 'Eleven public records for fun features,' -- is directed at journalists, since it's from the  Society of Professional Journalists' FOIFYI blog. But they're really ideas for anyone who has the curiosity and time to look into. These are records that tell you things about your community, which can be some of the most fascinating stuff to look through.

ProPublica.org has this report, the result of a Freedom of Information Act request to see the proposal/contract between the federal government and a software company that would produce the recovery.org web site, the place where you're supposed to be able to track all the stimulus spending.

It begins:

"Back in July, a software company named Smartronix landed an $18 million contract to build a Web site where taxpayers could easily track billions in federal stimulus money. It was just another part of the Obama administration's ongoing effort to bring transparency to stimulus spending, we were told.
 
 But it seems the drive for transparency doesn't cover the contract itself.

 After weeks of prodding by ProPublica and other organizations, the General Services Administration released copies of the contract and related documents that are so heavily blacked out they are virtually worthless."