I can't believe I'm thanking the loathsome Heritage Foundation and one of the biggest Republican partisans in congress for this heads-up...
Unless you've got tons of cash to burn, FOIA's are going bye-bye.
I wonder what took Bush so long to go after the cornerstone of the democratic process, the access to information about what the government has been up to...
...Until now, people who appealed a bureaucrat's withholding of documents requested under the FOIA could have their attorney's fees reimbursed by the federal government if their suit was the "catalyst" for the official to reverse the adverse decision...
Until now. Now they can deliberately run up the legal bills, and then stick YOU with them, even if they're the ones responsible for running them up. Tough shit, citizen...
more below the fold...
Seriously, this is by far the most damaging thing the Bush administration has done since the election-rigging. The FOIA has been the main weapon against government secrecy, which of course is the root of
many evils...
Under the 5-4 decision in Buckhannon, though, citizens appealing the bureaucrat's decision to conceal requested documents can have their legal fees paid by the government only by gaining a favorable court decision. That means the bureaucrat can wait until the last minute and then provide the documents without having to pay the requestor's legal costs...
...FOIA appeals often take years to complete and are terribly expensive, even under the best of circumstances. That's why it's vital for the "little guy" FOIA requestor to know a court can order an agency to pay his or her legal fees. Since all but a few FOIA requestors lack wads of money to pay high-priced lawyers, Buckhannon means thousands of FOIA appeals will never be filed.
What Cornyn describes is already happening. When Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau reporters filed FOIAs in February 2004 seeking documents on claims processing by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the department put up numerous obstacles, including demanding $41,250 in copying fees for irrelevant documents. Knight-Ridder appealed and a federal District Court told VA to get with it and start producing the requested documents. In March 2005, Knight-Ridder began publishing stories detailing thousands of cases in which veterans died years after appealing claims decisions that were never resolved.
Three days later, VA produced the final batch of requested documents and asked the Court to dismiss the case on the grounds that it had fully complied with the FOIA. Under Buckhannon, Knight-Ridder can't compel VA to pay its more than $30,000 in legal fees even though it is clear the media organization's suit forced VA to follow the law. Since few people can afford $30,000 in legal fees, Buckhannon means only requestors with deep pockets will ever take the government to court to force disclosure of documents that ought to be public in the first place.
No wonder Knight-Ridder's Clark Hoyt said VA was "stonewalling until it knew it could resist no longer. It forced us to spend thousands of dollars to compel its adherence to the law, delayed our stories many months and then caved at the last minute, knowing it had no chance of winning in court."...
&^%$#@!!