Mulvaney Moves to Hide Important Consumer Complaint Database
Mick Mulvaney, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is trying to take a database intended to hold financial institutions accountable offline, ending the public’s ability to file and view complaints. The database (tagline: “How one complaint can help millions”) is currently available here. Americans have filed more than one million complaints through the database, helping regulators decide which firms need to be investigated.
Mulvaney, who sponsored legislation to abolish the CFPB during his time in Congress, justifies the move by citing unproven potential harm to businesses. He also recently told a room of bankers and lobbyists at the American Bankers Association that he thought he could successfully make the case “that having a database that is publicly facing, but is not completely vetted, is probably not consistent with our overall mission.”
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission maintain similar public complaint databases.
The National Security Archive joined a coalition of consumer, civil rights, and open government groups in calling on Acting Director Mulvaney to “direct the CFPB to maintain the database with no change.”
State Department Ends Controversial FOIA Surge
The State Department has reportedly ended its controversial “FOIA Surge,” launched in October 2017 by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with the stated goal of clearing the agency’s monumental backlog of more than 13,000 requests. The surge came under fire for pulling in career diplomats and senior civil servants from other departments in a move that some believed was designed to make them quit.
Mark Zaid, an attorney for a State Department employee reassigned to the FOIA office, notes “One of the good things about the State Department is that they traditionally have had incredibly senior people, like ambassadors who wanted to come back, work in the FOIA office, and that office enjoyed a level of expertise that was unparalleled with other agencies,” he said. “But that’s not what Tillerson did, which was to take people who were [the rank of] GS-14 and 15 and pull them into positions that were GS-3 and 4, doing basic data entry, in a manner that in many cases was viewed as retaliatory.”
The program appeared to amplify pre-existing attitudes about the FOIA office at the Department.
The Hill reported in January that some State Department officials derided the FOIA shop and the idea of being sent there. “The FOIA office was always the punch line of a joke around here, as in: ‘They’ll send me to the FOIA office,’” likening the assignment as being “reassigned to Siberia.”
While some have dialed-back the Siberia rhetoric, troubling attitudes about the integral work of the FOIA office appear to remain despite the end of the surge. One State official called the surge, “a misguided policy that FOIA was one of the most important things that needed to be addressed, as opposed to our foreign policy with Iran or North Korea or anything else.” This sentiment overlooks the department’s legal obligation under the FOIA and misses the deeper truth of the relationship between FOIA and the State Department in particular. Rich public debate and expert historical analysis of declassified foreign policy documents dealing with North Korea, Iran, and others, improves contemporary policy-makers’ decision-making abilities.
It is not yet clear if the FOIA surge had any impact on the State Department’s backlog.
Concerns and Opportunities Over Obama Presidential Library Model
The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration’s recent announcement that the Obama presidential center will be “opting out” of NARA’s presidential library system drew questions and concerns. While NARA spokespeople say the move is “mutually beneficial” and will better adapt to people seeking information in a digital age, MuckRock points outthat many historians and members of the open government community see the move as “a blow to a functioning democracy.”
The Archive’s Nate Jones notes that, while the move raises questions about access to Obama’s records and the nature of NARA’s relationship to future presidential libraries and museums, that the current process for accessing historical records at NARA-run presidential libraries is “ludicrous and grossly inefficient.” Historians typically must file a FOIA request, then an MDR or two to receive the documents, and the entire NARA-run process can take a decade or more. There is an opportunity for the Obama museum to create a more efficient model for accessing historical records.
DOD FOIA Exemption REDUX
The Defense Department is seeking – for the fourth time – a new FOIA exemption that would withhold unclassified military, tactics, and techniques. The proposed language is vague and raises concerns that the exemption could potentially be abused to justify withholding much of the information created by the DOD. The proposal also raises the questions: 1) why the unclassified material that the DOD is attempting to withhold cannot be classified and withheld under FOIA’s exemption 1 that already shields “properly classified” national security information; and 2) why the DOD continues to propose the exemption without input from the congressional committees that oversee FOIA?
Change to MDR Process at Pentagon Coming?
A bill introduced by Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, should be monitored carefully by open government advocates and historians. The bill proposes eliminating the Defense Department’s Washington Headquarters Service Agency, the entry point for Mandatory Declassification Review requests for many DOD agencies including the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The bill aims to drastically cut spending at the agency, as much as 25 percent, and does not address how WHS functions – like MDR and FOIA processing – would be relocated.
FOIA Federal Advisory Committee Recs Will Help Agency FOIA Shops Pass “Common-Sense Test”
An incredulous Senator Chuck Grassley told the Justice Department Office of Information Policy’s Melanie Pustay during the United States Sunshine Week this March that her defenses of lackluster government-wide FOIA performance didn’t pass “the common-sense test.” OIP’s support of agencies who claimed 508 compliance concerns were a valid reason for agencies to hesitate posting documents online – or, worse yet, an excuse to remove documents currently published on government websites – was one such “common-sense test” failure for Grassley and Senator Patrick Leahy.
At their most recent meeting the FOIA Advisory Committee took the first tangible step to help agencies navigate 508 compliance concerns. The committee approved 37 recommendation, including encouraging agencies on 508 to, instead of either not posting documents or even removing previously posted documents, “remediate documents that are not currently 508 compliant” and “ensure that their FOIA reading rooms include contact information that individuals with disabilities can use if they encounter inaccessible documents.” The Committee also recommended that agencies familiarize themselves with the Rehabilitation Act’s “undue burden provision” that allows agencies to post electronic documents that are not Section 508 compliant if rendering them compliant would “impose an undue burden” on the agency.
The committee’s other recommendations include “expanding the use of tracking records, allocating resources for agency IT experts to work with FOIA officials for electronic searches, creating rotational career programs to get younger employees into FOIA, plus using interns or temporary staff for time-consuming tasks such as data entry.”
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