Obama admin spent $36M on lawsuits to keep info secret

[hislegacy]

From what he let us not forget files

Obama admin spent $36M on lawsuits to keep info secret

The Obama administration in its final year in office spent a record $36.2 million on legal costs defending its refusal to turn over federal records under the Freedom of Information Act, according to an Associated Press analysis of new U.S. data that also showed poor performance in other categories measuring transparency in government.

 

[Tanj]

From the "lets not cherry pick files"

The figures reflect the final struggles of the Obama administration during the 2016 election to meet President Barack Obama’s pledge that it was “the most transparent administration in history,” despite wide recognition of serious problems coping with requests under the information law. It received a record 788,769 requests for files last year and spent a record $478 million answering them and employed 4,263 full-time FOIA employees across more than 100 federal departments and agencies. That was higher by 142 such employees the previous year.

Date of article: Last Updated Mar 14, 2017

Missed out on it being a full year old by just a couple of days.

 

[Hank77]

From what he let us not forget files

Obama admin spent $36M on lawsuits to keep info secret

The Obama administration in its final year in office spent a record $36.2 million on legal costs defending its refusal to turn over federal records under the Freedom of Information Act, according to an Associated Press analysis of new U.S. data that also showed poor performance in other categories measuring transparency in government.

March 2010 .....
The Democratic administration of Barack Obama, who denounced his predecessor, George W. Bush, as the most secretive in history, is now denying more Freedom of Information Act requests than the Republican did.
A little secret about Obama's transparency

FOIA Lawsuits Surge in Trump Administration’s First Year | The FOIA Project
FOIA Lawsuits Surge in Trump Administration’s First Year
by FOIA Project Staff on January 16th, 2018

Since the new administration took office at the end of January 2017, there has been a sharp jump in the number of lawsuits filed by individuals and organizations seeking court orders to obtain federal government records.[1] Suits brought by the news media and nonprofit advocacy organizations have fueled a significant part of this rise. Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), requesters can file suit when information they are seeking is withheld and they have exhausted administrative appeals, or when the agency fails to even respond in a timely manner.


Lawsuits this past fiscal year rose an astonishing 26 percent, and are continuing to climb. FOIA court cases are now up over 70 percent from just five years ago. See Figure 1.

Of coarse Trump has never bragged about being a transparent administration.

 

[Arcangl86]

Obama isn't President anymore. Not sure what his administration's lack of transparency has to do with anything anymore.

 

[now faith]

Obama isn't President anymore. Not sure what his administration's lack of transparency has to do with anything anymore.

Accountability.

If more politicians were prosecuted for their crimes after their tenure, then they would be more prone to not commit crimes while in office.

 

[Kentonio]

Accountability.

If more politicians were prosecuted for their crimes after their tenure, then they would be more prone to not commit crimes while in office.

How about we focus on the crimes being committed by the guy currently in office, and we can catch up with the old ones later?

 

[He is Risen 72]

Nobody cares about the Millions and Millions of tax payer dollars that the Obama White House wasted on concealing their so called transparent administration. The real news is how the Trump Administration is going to bankrupt the country with a 31 Thousand dollar furniture purchase…


that was canceled.

 

[Kentonio]

Nobody cares about the Millions and Millions of tax payer dollars that the Obama White House wasted on concealing their so called transparent administration. The real news is how the Trump Administration is going to bankrupt the country with a 31 Thousand dollar furniture purchase…


that was canceled.

Or a $1.5 trillion gift to his corporate masters..

 

[He is Risen 72]

Or a $1.5 trillion gift to his corporate masters..

The last time I took a government class, it was The Congress of the United States that came up with the Budget…

 

[RDKirk]

Accountability.

If more politicians were prosecuted for their crimes after their tenure, then they would be more prone to not commit crimes while in office.

What crime was that? I was in a position to field FOIA requests myself when I worked in SAC headquarters under Reagan, and come to think of it, I turned all of them down. Most were from NORML.

 

[Kentonio]

The last time I took a government class, it was The Congress of the United States that came up with the Budget…

You're behind the times, the separation of powers is no longer a thing under Trump and Ryan.

 

[He is Risen 72]

You're behind the times, the separation of powers is no longer a thing under Trump and Ryan.

If that were the case, the United States would have our wall, gotten rid of all the terrorist sleeper cells in the country, prevent terrorists from entering the country, prevent illegals from entering the country and everything else that the obstructionist are preventing our elected President from accomplishing.

 

[DaisyDay]

Accountability.

If more politicians were prosecuted for their crimes after their tenure, then they would be more prone to not commit crimes while in office.

First there would have to be a crime committed.

There were a lot of FOI requests refused, but I don't know what the nature of the requests or the reasons for refusal were. At the same time, more information was made more easily available online to citizens than ever before - people forget that part of the equation. I had heard that the Obama administration ever went on a classifying binge like Cheney did, reclassifying historical information from the Reagan years.

 

[RDKirk]

.

 

[Go Braves]

Well I'm glad that at least Obama didn't have to shell out a ton of money on lawyers to fight suits by inappropriate content stars.

 

[grasping the after wind]

How about we focus on the crimes being committed by the guy currently in office, and we can catch up with the old ones later?

Can we not chew gum and walk simultaneously? How about we make sure we bring all the corrupt politicians to justice not just the ones you don't politically agree with. When Trump leaves office will you say " lets not be bothered with the corruption of the last many years, the new one might be doing bad things now we just don't have any evidence yet so we need to forget the past completely and only concentrate on the present administration. "?

 

[Kentonio]

Can we not chew gum and walk simultaneously? How about we make sure we bring all the corrupt politicians to justice not just the ones you don't politically agree with. When Trump leaves office will you say " lets not be bothered with the corruption of the last many years, the new one might be doing bad things now we just don't have any evidence yet so we need to forget the past completely and only concentrate on the present administration. "?

I personally am all in favour of investigating and charging any and all politicians who engage in corruption, no matter what party badge they wear. Let’s be serious though, this op (like all the others) isn’t about some desire to hold all politicians accountable, it’s a smear on a previous president (who had a remarkably scandal free presidency by modern presidential standards) to try and distract attention from the guy currently in the Oval Office that is using America as his and his friends personal piggy bank.

Is anyone genuinely supposed to be tricked by this? The current president is under FBI investigation for a whole raft of alleged crimes, his family are apparently profiteering and using national policy to effect their private businesses, the secret service don’t have enough money to keep up with Trump and his families constant golfing holidays and trips on the taxpayers dime, and there are allegations that Trumps tendency to phone his friends in the middle of the night to discuss policy ideas may have led to them indulging in insider trading. This is just a small snippet of the massive corruption going on, yet we’re supposed to be up in arms over Obama not fulfilling his Freedom of Infomation promises fully? Give me a break..

 

[RDKirk]

First there would have to be a crime committed.

There were a lot of FOI requests refused, but I don't know what the nature of the requests or the reasons for refusal were. At the same time, more information was made more easily available online to citizens than ever before - people forget that part of the equation. I had heard that the Obama administration ever went on a classifying binge like Cheney did, reclassifying historical information from the Reagan years.

Ultimately, it's not a crime to refuse an FOIA request. As I said, I refused a raft of them myself. That's why the issue goes to court--that is a specific step in the statutory process. It would only be a crime if the administration refused to turn over materials after being ordered by the court...and the administration often wins those lawsuits.