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03/12/07
Sunshine Week 2007
Open-government bills to get Sunshine Week votes in House
By LAURIE KELLMAN
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Democrats hope to breathe new life
into open-government legislation, marking Sunshine Week with
votes to protect whistle-blowers, smooth freedom of information
requests and compel presidential libraries to disclose more
about their donors. Efforts to shield reporters from revealing
their sources are not faring so well.
The House is to vote on as many as five bills coinciding with
this week's annual campaign by open-government advocates to
draw attention to a need for accessibility and accountability
in the fight against abuse and waste.
"Open government is a nonpartisan issue," said Rick
Blum, spokesman for the Sunshine in Government Initiative,
a coalition of media groups.
But very little is nonpartisan in Washington.
Majority Democrats want to use the five bills to highlight
what they say is the Bush administration's use of executive
power and secrecy, according to a memo obtained by The Associated
Press and being circulated among lawmakers. They argue that
Republicans running Congress during Bush's first six years
conducted almost no oversight as the administration went to
war.
Shabby conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, secret
national security letters for gaining access to people's financial
records and a warrantless wiretapping program all point to
White House misuse of executive power and secrecy in the war
against terrorism, Democrats contend.
The bills all are sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.,
chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
They would:
-- Reverse a Bush administration directive by restoring the
presumption that agencies should release records to the public
when allowed by law and when they cannot reasonably foresee
that the disclosure would cause harm.
-- Require government agencies to disclose the reasons for
awarding no-bid contracts.
-- Provide whistle-blower protection to workers who regularly
handle classified information, including private contractors
and scientists.
-- Require organizations established for the purpose of raising
funds for presidential libraries to disclose the sources of
contributions of $200 or more.
-- Make it harder for current and former presidents to withhold
presidential records.
In the slower-moving Senate, Judiciary Committee Chairman
Patrick Leahy of Vermont is convening a hearing Wednesday
on legislation to smooth the freedom of information process.
The same bill never made it to a vote in either the House
or Senate in the last Congress.
Not receiving a vote this week -- or for the foreseeable future
-- will be legislation that would shield reporters from being
forced by prosecutors to reveal their sources or face jail.
Advocates say whistle-blowers are less likely to expose abuse
if reporters can be compelled to reveal their sources.
The issue has been much in the news.
"I suppose you can make an argument that the entire Judith
Miller-Valerie Plame matter did not advance this cause very
much," said Otis L. Sanford, chairman of the First Amendment
Committee for the Associated Press Managing Editors Association.
"However, in my view it would be wrong to push for, or
reject, valid legislation based on one incident."
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., a chief sponsor of a bill to provide
such a shield, said he does not list "the Judith Miller
case" when he advocates for the legislation.
"That in and of itself would not be a good example,"
Boucher says. "For my purposes it was not persuasive
of the needs for a statute."
Miller, at the time a reporter for The New York Times, served
85 days in jail rather than testify before a grand jury in
the CIA leak case, then did testify after being released from
a pledge of anonymity by her source.
Said Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., who has sponsored media shield
legislation and is supporting several bills to modify the
Freedom of Information Act:
"Some would think, for example, that the conduct of reporters
raises questions as to what sort of people they are and how
are they conducting themselves. I understand all that. But
the ideal that we're seeking hasn't really changed."
It's unclear whether Bush would sign any of the legislation
into law during his last two years in office. The Justice
department has not yet taken positions on the measures, a
spokesman said.
In several hearings last year, Justice Department officials
argued that national security interests should trump freedom
of information concerns if disclosure of information would
make the country less safe.
Bush, who in 2005 acknowledged a "suspicion" that
his administration was too security-conscious, issued an executive
order that year designed to speed the government's response
time to freedom-of-information requests. The order designated
a chief FOIA officer, a FOIA requester service center and
public liaisons to receive complaints from requesters.
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The bills are: H.R. 1309 (FOIA), H.R. 1254 and H.R. 1255 (presidential
libraries), H.R. 1362 (contracting) and H.R. 985 (whistle-blowers).
They can be seen at http://thomas.loc.gov
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On the Net:
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform: http://www.oversight.house.gov
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