Sen. Cornyn Discusses His Plans for FOIA Reform
It has been almost 25 years since the Senate Judiciary Committee held an oversight hearing on the Freedom of Information Act, half that since the committee examined FOIA compliance, Sen. John Cornyn, R-TX, writes in the LBJ Journal of Public Affairs, published twice a year by students of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. Sen. Cornyn, a committee member, said he intends to change that “as early as possible” in the session just beginning. The goal, he writes, is legislation approved by Congress to “close loopholes in the law, help requestors obtain timely responses to their requests, ensure that agencies have strong incentives to act on requests in a timely fashion, and provide FOIA officials with the tools they need to ensure that our government remains open and accessible.”