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Information priced out of reach

The U.S. Justice Department has found a new way to prevent the public from inquiring into the workings of government: charge exorbitant fees for the information.

When the liberal interest group, the People for the American Way Foundation, asked the Justice Department under the Freedom of Information Act for records related to the legal proceedings involving immigrants swept up following the attacks of Sept. 11, the group was presented with a bill of nearly $400,000. It was told that the bill would have to be prepaid before the request would be honored.

As PFAWF president Ralph Neas put it aptly: "Apparently, they've taken the "free' out of "Freedom of Information.' "

These costs are completely out of whack with standard charges and, if allowed to stand, will strike another hard blow against a law intended to make government information more accessible to Americans.

In November 2003, PFAWF made a relatively straightforward request for information on the government's efforts to close the legal proceedings of hundreds of immigrants detained in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. After much wrangling and the filing of a lawsuit by PFAWF, the department finally agreed to provide the documents if the organization paid for their collection at the dozens of U.S. Attorney offices around the country. It estimated that the search would take 13,316.25 hours at $28 per hour (minus the first two free hours) which came to $372,799. The department also warned that this was a conservative estimate and did not include the 10-cents-per-page copying costs. As to when the information would be available, the department said in some cases it may not be forthcoming "for at least one year."

The outlandish fees follow a pattern of secrecy established by the Bush administration and the Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft. In October 2001, Ashcroft switched from the Clinton administration's approach of promoting the dissemination of public records to holding back wherever there is the slightest legal justification.

But overcharging for public records is not a novel approach to closing government business to public eyes. It has been tried many times by numerous public agencies both at the federal level and in Florida. Terry Anzur, a reporter for WPEC-TV, the CBS affiliate in West Palm Beach, is currently battling a $39,000 fee demanded by the Palm Beach County School District for copies of the applications of the district's school volunteers. Often, when a government agency knows it is about to be embarrassed or caught in wrongdoing, public records become harder to extract.

For "freedom of information" to fulfill its promise, the government must provide the public with documents and records at a reasonable fee. Otherwise, making government accountable will soon be a task reserved for millionaires. That may be an attractive proposition for the Bush administration, but it would be a tragic undoing of more than 30 years of federal law protecting the public's right to know.

[Last modified February 10, 2005, 00:26:16]