The Obama administration will continue to be the "most transparent administration in history" despite a rule change eliminating Freedom of Information Act regulations for the White House Office of Administration, Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday.
Earnest called the repeal of the office's FOIA regulation an "administrative change" that "has no impact on our compliance with the Freedom of Information Act."
With a notice published in Tuesday's Federal Register, the White House deleted a federal regulation about how its back-office functions would be open to public requests for information. Earnest said the move was an effort to "clean up the books" in response to a six-year-old appeals court ruling that held that the Office of Administration was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
"People are certainly still welcome to submit requests," Earnest said. However, with the formal procedures for responding to those requests now repealed, he said he was not sure how those requests would be handled.
Transparency advocates have decried the rule change, saying it ignores 30 years of historical precedent that the office was subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Since it was first established by President Carter in 1977, the Office of Administration responded to FOIA requests under the Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations.Read the rest of the story HERE and view a related video below:
Here is a related story:
Explaining the White House FOIA rule repeal
If you like what you see, please "Like" us on Facebook either here or here. Please follow us on Twitter here.
No comments:
Post a Comment