An oil spill near Tar Creek in the Los Padres National Forest was in part investigated by the Bureau of Land Management, one of the key agencies that would be impacted by the Department of the Interior’s proposed changes to FOIA regulations.
Click here to submit a comment online!
The Trump administration is proposing to significantly limit the amount of information it makes available to the public about national parks, national monuments, wildlife refuges, and other public lands. During the holidays and amidst the government shutdown, the Department of the Interior announced changes in how it processes requests from the public through the Freedom of Information Act (commonly called FOIA) — a bedrock law passed in 1966 that ensures government transparency and public access to agency records.
Thousands of organizations, media outlets, and individuals across the country — including ForestWatch — have used FOIA to request important documents from the Department, which manages 500 million acres of public land throughout the country including national parks and monuments, wildlife refuges, and water reclamation projects. Prompt and open access to Department documents helps the public understand how public lands are managed, and illuminates activities ranging from oil drilling, mining, and livestock grazing to the protection of wildlife.
The proposed changes — published in the December 28 Federal Register — would limit the public’s ability to access department records, and would make it easier for the Department to deny requests and keep documents secret. Specifically, they would limit the number of FOIA requests the Department of the Interior processes each month. They would also allow the Department to reject any requests deemed “unreasonably burdensome” or which require “inspection of a vast quantity of material.” These vague restrictions could allow agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other agencies housed in the Interior Department to easily deny requests for public records.
A public comment period on the proposal is open until January 25. Earlier this week ForestWatch joined 91 other organizations across the country in requesting that the Interior Department extend the comment deadline due to the broad scope of the changes and the ongoing government shutdown. Despite the online comment system experiencing outages and the flow of information to the public being limited during the partial government shutdown, the deadline has not been extended.
The number of FOIA lawsuits filed against the Department of the Interior has steeply increased since Trump took office. Graph courtesy of foiaproject.org.
The proposal comes at a time when FOIA lawsuits filed against the Department of the Interior are increasing under the Trump administration. Across all federal agencies, the number of FOIA lawsuits hit an all-time high in 2018, increasing 67% compared to the last full fiscal year under the Obama administration. The increase in litigation can be attributed to the Department denying more requests, missing deadlines more frequently, and enacting controversial policies like shrinking the size of national monuments. A spike in oil drilling on public lands has also led to an increase in public attention and scrutiny as well as multiple ethics investigations with the Department’s top officials.
Early last year, ForestWatch filed a lawsuit against the Interior Department for withholding records relating to the administration’s 2017 review of the Carrizo Plain National Monument and other national monuments. Under the proposed rule changes, such a request would likely be denied outright by the Department. The proposed changes would also affect the public’s ability to obtain information about other public lands in our region, including Channel Islands National Park, Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and scattered parcels of Bureau of Land Management lands where drilling and fracking is proposed.
Ironically, federal agencies are currently not responding to any FOIA requests during the government shutdown. Most FOIA staff have been furloughed, and the offices that process FOIA requests are empty.
“Simply put, the Interior Department’s proposed changes will keep the public in the dark about this administration’s devious attempts to roll back protections for our public lands,” said ForestWatch Conservation Director Bryant Baker. “This move is a clear impingement on a cornerstone of democracy and government transparency that has been on the books for more than half a century.”
The Department will accept public comments on the proposed changes through January 28. Click here to easily and quickly submit a comment online.
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