Crews may be battling wildfires from San Diego to Siskiyou counties as California's fire season gets underway in earnest, but officials here are focusing on one of last year's most publicized blazes---a deadly conflagration perhaps made worse by a delayed response. Smokey the Bear himself is now in the firing line. According to Paul Pringle of the Los Angeles Times, both of California's U.S. Senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, along with a number of Southland congressmen are demanding

Third article in our series “The Face of America Abroad” By Mitchell Polman Washington, June 3 -- Two former employees of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) recently sent to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder a petition alleging unfair labor practices at the U.S.-supported radio and information service.  The petition is the latest salvo in an ongoing labor dispute that is causing international embarrassment for a venerable institution of America's public diplomacy.  It is also causing some headaches for the Obama Administration and especially for Secretary of State Clinton, whom the plaintiffs at one point petitioned to appear before the court in her capacity as a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), RFE/RL's parent agency. The former employees of RFE/RL, Snježana Pelivan of the Croatian service, and Anna Karapetian of the Armenian service, are suing RFE/RL and the BBG in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg over the radios' employment practices.  The Croatian and Armenian governments are supporting their lawsuits.

Jim Romenesko picked up this item from the Times-Picayune:  reporter Mark Schleifstein has been waiting since October 2005 for FEMA to respond to his request for public records about the Katrina disaster.   Sorry to use the very same quote Romenesko picked out.  It just can't be improved upon:

Almost ...

The case of potentially millions of missing White House e-mails has illuminated the broader lack of a federal electronic recordkeeping system. House Democrats have introduced legislation that would get the National Archives and Records Administration to set a standard for capturing and preserving e-mails across the federal government. The ...

Another key sticking point of the CPSC bill is what should go into a public database of unsafe products on the market. As the Wall Street Journal’s Jane Zhang reports, the politics and practicality of public disclosure is an issue also besetting the United States Department of Agriculture.

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Congress has passed new legislation requiring greater transparency and quicker responses from federal agency to Freedom of Information Act requests.  The latest on FOIA has been published in the Lafayette, Indiana Journal and Courier.  Read the AP's Laurie Kellman here.

Remember when half of U.S. media outlets weren't owned by an Australian-born billionaire, and the other half by a handful of faceless corporations?  That was before the FCC pushed through new media ownership rules without public involvement, as they seem poised to do once again.

David Carr of the Times writes about the gradual demise of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the real difficulty of getting facts from our government, in large part because of “agencies that flout the law through recalcitrance or ineptitude.”  See Carr’s commentary here.

All together now:  “Hip, hip, hooray!”

 

There’s something to cheer about in how federal agencies are improving responses to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from the news media and citizens.

However, backlogs are rather large in some organizations and much work remains to be done.  One option ...

The Freedom of Information Act (commonly known in government circles as FOIA) was designed to allow citizens and the media much greater access to government files, deliberations, etc.

 

The following two articles, as well as other additional articles identified in these items appearing at govexec.com, show that further access to government ...