Trump Interior Dept. Wants to Charge More to Access Public Records

A recently unearthed report reveals Bureau of Land Management plans to limit how many FOIA requests a single person or group can submit and to make government records more expensive to acquire.

"President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on Independence Day, 1966. The act, he wrote, sprung from a principle that is “essential” to the nation: “A democracy works best when the people have all the information that the security of the nation will permit.”

Only national security, Johnson said, “not the desire of public officials,” should determine when information should be withheld from the public.

Ryan Zinke, the US secretary of the interior, would do well to study the history of the law that today his staff seems only interested in weakening. A radical, 52-year-old experiment in government transparency, FOIA was created with the knowledge that freedom only survives when the governors are held accountable to the governed. "

Dell Cameron reports for Gizmodo February 13, 2018.

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"Trump Administration Plan Would Roll Back Environmental Reviews Covering Use Of Public Lands" (Washington Post)