By Dan Friedman, CongressDaily
Less than a month after President Bush signed legislation overhauling the Freedom of Information Act, the measure’s main Senate backers are accusing the White House of planning to scuttle a special FOIA office in violation of the law.
An aide to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Office of Management and Budget officials have told committee staff that they plan in the president’s fiscal 2009 budget to park within the Justice Department all the funding authorized by the new law for a Government Information Services Office within the National Archives and Records Administration.
The office would include an ombudsman to oversee FOIA disputes across government. It is intended to push agencies to comply with the law, address FOIA backlogs and speed up resolution of FOIA requests. The office has not received any appropriations and its budget has not been set.
But by shifting the funding to the Justice Department, OMB would effectively eliminate the office, because it appears no similar operation would be created there, Leahy’s aide said. Instead, the funds apparently would go to the department’s Information Policy Office, which now oversees government FOIA compliance.
(Original Article)