As we posted on Wednesday, the Department of Justice has published the FOIA data reported by agencies for fiscal year 2019. DOJ will summarize all of the data in the near future, but it did note that the federal government had received 858,952 requests in FY 2019, down slightly from FY 2018, when a record 863,729 requests were received. FOIA Advisor staffers Allan Blutstein (AB) and Kevin Schmidt (KS) share their thoughts on the available data.
AB: Last year I predicted that the number of requests in FY 2019 would set a second consecutive record, but perhaps we’ve reached a saturation point. FOIA lawsuits have also leveled off according to The FOIA Project, which reported 859 filings in calendar year 2018 and 849 filings in calendar year 2019. Barring a major catastrophe (e.g., coronavirus outbreak), I suspect the volume of requests in FY 2020 will again approach or surpass FY 2018.
Beyond this, I looked closely at the data of USDA, DHS, NARA, DOJ, and DOD, which all told receive more than 70 percent of all FOIA requests. Interestingly, two of these agencies experienced significant changes in their workloads from FY 2018 to FY 2019: (1) NARA, whose requests increased 27 percent (from 52,850 to 67,466); and (2) USDA, whose requests decreased 27 percent (from 36,547 to 26,458). I was also struck by the fluctuating backlogs of DOJ, NARA, and DHS over the same time period. Specifically, DOJ’s backlog increased 46 percent (from 17,411 to 25,558); NARA’s backlog increased 85 percent (from 1810 to 3359); and DHS’s backlog decreased 71 percent (from 53,971 to 31,454).
KS: Let’s start with the Interior Department, which was under fire in the media for its policy changes to its FOIA program. Surprisingly, Interior saw the number of requests drop from 8,402 in FY 2018 to 7,973 in FY 2019. Despite the slight downturn in the number of requests, Interior’s backlog increased by about 24 percent.
The number of requests received by the State Department appears to be stabilizing after the huge spike in FY 2016 due to the inquires regarding then-Secretary Clinton’s e-mail. In that year, State received 27,961 requests, but in FY 2019, it only received 8,589, a slight increase over FY 2018.
Lastly, I was curious about the Department of Commerce and U.S Trade Representative, the two key agencies at the heart of President Trump’s trade wars. Commerce hit a three-year high for requests received and pending requests at the end of the fiscal year, suggesting sustained interest, although unclear if it’s entirely trade war related considering the size and scope of the agency. Requests to USTR dropped from 186 in FY 2018 to 136 in FY 2019.
AB: Perhaps Interior’s backlog was exacerbated by the burdens of litigation. The data indicate that Interior incurred $2.5 million in litigation costs in FY 2019, whereas its FY 2018 costs were only $1 million. On this score, I should add that DHS’s litigation costs notably decreased over the same time period (from $7.4 million to $3.8 million), as did the litigation costs of DOD (from $5.2 million to $3.2.million). Meanwhile, DOJ, which bears the government’s largest litigation costs, saw a modest 14 percent increase (from $14.5 million to $16.6 million).