Feds keep tight rein on FOIA requests

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s top environmental policymakers are engaged in a new war with their adversaries — over how much information to release to the media and outside groups, who are often perceived as enemies, as part of a heavy stream of Freedom of Information Act requests.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department are at ground zero in this growing feud. At both departments and elsewhere in the administration, news outlets and nonprofit organizations have uncovered meeting schedules and travel manifests through FOIA requests that illustrate the ties top officials have forged with players in industries they are tasked with regulating. FOIA requests have also shed light on EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s taxpayer-funded travel habits.

The result is that some highlevel officials at both EPA and Interior are keeping closer tabs on these FOIA requests.

At Interior, Zinke’s office has taken direct control of the various FOIA requests that have piled up at the various agencies responsible for his review of national monuments.

In April, President Donald Trump instructed Zinke to review all national monuments established since 1996 that span 100,000 acres or more. Preparing for a public relations and potential legal battle, environmentalists and other groups outside government began filing federal records requests to learn exactly how Zinke was conducting the review.

In early November, as Zinke was finalizing his recommendations to the White House, Clarice Julka, a FOIA officer in Zinke’s office, emailed other FOIA officers in 11 different Interior offices, including the Park Service and BLM, to inform them she and FOIA officers in the secretary’s office would handle requests pertaining to the review going forward.

Julka told staffers to collect records that responded to FOIA requests about the monuments, and forward them to the secretary’s office rather than send them to the news outlets, nonprofits and groups making the requests.

Interior spokeswoman Heather Swift declined to comment on how Interior is handling national monument requests.

“The desire to consolidate duplicative FOIAs isn’t in itself a sign of something untoward,” said David Pozen, a professor at Columbia Law School and expert on information law. “But the consolidation of the FOIA requests in a political office strikes me as more notable and concerning.”