Posted on: Sunday, March 13, 2005

AFTER DEADLINE

By Saundra Keyes
Advertiser Editor

Beginning today, The Advertiser joins media organizations across the country in the largest national effort ever to promote freedom of information and open government.

The "Sunshine Week" project reflects journalists' concern about decreasing access to information that should be public.

Why should you care whether journalists have problems getting government records?

First, because in asking for those records, we are your surrogates.

And more significantly, because if we can't get the information, you can't either.

Take the environment, an issue of passionate concern both to this newspaper and to many of our readers.

For more than three decades, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has required detailed studies of the effects a proposed federal project would have on the environment.

Both journalists and the general public have benefited from data in the environmental impact statements and assessments that result.

But under a directive proposed last June by the Department of Homeland Security, public release of that data could be sharply curtailed.

Any citizen who cares about the environment therefore has a stake in this directive's result.

And more generally, just as journalists do, you have a stake in the erosion of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which governs public access to a range of federal records.

That access has decreased significantly since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

In October 2001, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a new directive on FOIA, lowering the standard federal agencies must meet to refuse a records request.

In 2003, about one-third of federal officials responsible for handling FOIA requests told the General Accounting Office that their agencies were releasing less information as a result.

That means that thousands of citizens no longer have access to federal information they previously could have obtained.

As a host of journalists and citizen groups have observed, advocates of restricting government information — who were plentiful even before 9/11 — frequently assert a national-security purpose without convincing proof.

In a news report last month, Lance Gay of the Scripps Howard News Service pointed out that secrecy rules increasingly are used to suppress formerly public information that simply is embarrassing or controversial.

For example, in February 2002 the U.S. Department of Agriculture removed from its Web site its required annual reports on treatment of animals used in scientific experiments, saying it wanted to see whether they contained "homeland security information."

Though the Justice Department ruled that the material doesn't involve security concerns, agriculture officials have refused to release recent reports or restore the deleted material, Gay wrote, quoting an official of the Humane Society of the United States. The society has filed suit to get the documents.

You, too, could sue for access to documents the government withholds, just as The Advertiser or any group or citizens can.

But a lawsuit requires deeper pockets than most individuals have, and is a financial strain even on media organizations.

And it takes time — so much time, in many cases, that the information is useless by the time you get it.

Those who want to keep information secret know this, and they count on people simply giving up when their response to an open-records request drags on for months or years.

While discussions of diminished FOI access most often focus on the federal government, an ongoing study at the University of Florida raises similar concerns at the state level.

The university's Marion Brechner Citizen Access Project (www.citizenaccess.org) has examined each state's laws on public access to information, rating various categories from a low of 1 (defined as "dark") to 7 (defined as "sunny").

While no overall rating for Hawai'i was available last week, the state's rankings in 36 categories ranged from a low of 2 ("nearly dark") in five categories to a high of 6 ("mostly sunny") in one. Hawai'i was rated "cloudy" in 15 categories, "partly cloudy" in seven, and "sunny with clouds" in eight others.

While such rankings give an overall picture of our state's degree of open government, The Advertiser's experience and accounts from readers indicate that access varies by agency.

Some readily provide information, while others try to close meetings that should be open, or stall requests for records the law defines as public.

To help you get the information you're entitled to, we've published a guide in the "A" section of today's newspaper. We've also created a Web page (the.honoluluadvertiser.com/publicsunshine) to provide information on both state and federal FOI laws.

We did it because those laws don't exist to benefit journalists. They exist for you.

Saundra Keyes is editor of The Honolulu Advertiser. Reach her at skeyes@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8080.