EPA faces record number of transparency lawsuits
Miranda Green, The Hill, Feb. 26, 2018
A record number of anti-secrecy lawsuits were filed in 2017 against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Administrator Scott Pruitt, Politico reported Monday.
Forty-six open records lawsuits were filed against the EPA in 2017, according to data from the FOIA Project at the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, with a total of 55 open records lawsuits filed against the agency since President Trump took office.
The next busiest year on record was 2015, when 22 lawsuits were filed after the Obama EPA finalized major rules on wetlands protection and power plant emissions. By comparison, former President George W. Bush's EPA faced only 57 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits during his entire eight-year presidency.
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A Watchdog Group Highlights the EPA's Delayed FOIA Responses
Candace Butera, Pacific Standard, Feb. 26, 2018
Over the past year, the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of the Administrator has significantly delayed the department's processing of Freedom of Information Act requests, according to an ongoing analysis by Project on Government Oversight, a non-partisan non-profit that tracks corruption in the federal government.
The initial findings of the analysis show that the office within the EPA has only closed fewer than 17 percent of FOIA requests. The fallback in FOIA response has prompted an unprecedented spike in FOIA lawsuits filed against the Scott Pruitt-led EPA by open government groups, environmentalists, and even conservative organizations, Politico reports.
Read more here.