For years, the Bush administration has been labeled by many as the most secretive administration to occupy the White House in decades. This penchant for secrecy has pushed the pendulum far from openness and transparency. And while the pendulum did not swing back significantly in 2006, the movement toward greater secrecy was finally challenged and slowed. The year still contained many proposals to reduce government accountability and openness. However, there were also indications that the public and certain officials had come to believe that excessive secrecy had become unmanageable and ran contrary to the stated goals of its proponents — to create a better, safer country. Such differing viewpoints often gave rise to high drama, and in recognition of that, we present the 2006 Transparency Awards. Award for Best New Transparency Law — Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act After a month of secret holds, back-room maneuvering, stall tactics and butting of heads, the Senate and House passed the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S. 2590), and on Sept. 26, President Bush signed it into law. The new law will increase government accountability and public access to federal spending data by creating a free, public, searchable website of all federal spending, including government contracts and grants. The site, to be overseen by the Office of Management and Budget, must be online by Jan. 2008. OMB Watch launched a prototype of such a website, called FedSpending.org, which uses currently collected data on contracts, grants, loans, direct payments and insurance to provide online searchable access to more than $12 trillion in federal spending from the past six years. Award for Biggest Secret — National Security Administration’s Warrantless Spying Program The discovery that President Bush authorized the National Security Administration (NSA) to spy, without warrants, on the international communications of U.S. citizens was perhaps the most jarring government secret that we wrestled with in 2006. The New York Times broke the story in Dec. 2005, but the ongoing battle that ensued between the Bush administration and Congress played out throughout this year. Many members of Congress were outraged that the White house did not inform key committees on intelligence, homeland security and judiciary matters about the program. The Bush administration vigorously fought to keep details of the program secret from such committees as they attempted to conduct oversight. Dodging questions in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales did little to inspire confidence in the oversight process. According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Dec. 13, 66 percent of Americans think the federal government is spying on its citizens in the name of investigating terrorism and over half think Congress should hold hearings on this surveillance. Award for Greatest Missed Opportunity — Lobby Reform At the start of 2006, all of Washington was abuzz with the idea of lobby reform. On the heels of a guilty plea by lobbyist Jack Abramoff, both parties began hurriedly preparing lobby and ethics reform legislation. The Abramoff scandal brought into sharp focus, for both Congress and the public, how easily money could be used to influence government decisions. The lobby reform frenzy gave rise to numerous interesting ideas from both sides of the aisle to reign in the influence of money on the political system. Transparency and disclosure were common tools applied to the difficult issue of making lobbying and legislating more accountable. Provisions to require improved reporting of gifts and sponsored travel were common. Other offices proposed overhauling the lobbying disclosure procedures to make the tracking of lobbyists easier, or requiring the activities of conference committees to be more public and open. While a host of bills with differing combinations of such provisions were introduced in both the House and Senate, none of them were signed into law. As months passed, the spotlight faded from the lobby reform issue and so too did Congress’ interest in tackling this difficult issue. According to top agenda items listed by Democratic leaders, Congress may have another chance to follow through on such reforms in 2007. Award for Worst Reversal — Cutting Toxics Release Inventory Reporting While officially announced toward the end of 2005, most of the fighting over these controversial proposals occurred in 2006. The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) program, operating since 1998, has long been heralded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and others as an ideal environmental program — simple, low-cost and effective. The program simply collects data on toxic pollution and makes the information public each year. The public pressure to reduce toxic releases has been so effective that in last six years, there has been an estimated decline in annual toxic waste of 2.8 billion pounds. Despite the enormous success of the TRI program, EPA has been pushing plans to significantly cut back the data by raising the threshold for detailed reporting and reducing the frequency of reporting. Opposition to these proposals has been massive. As an OMB Watch report documented, more than 122,000 people wrote into EPA opposing the rollback, the agency’s own Science Advisory Board voiced concerns about EPA’s plans, and the Environmental Council of the States passed a resolution urging the EPA to withdraw the proposals. The House passed an amendment to bar EPA from spending money to finalize its plans. Unfortunately, since the Senate did not pass an Interior Appropriations bill, no similar amendment was possible in the Senate. Instead, New Jersey Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) placed a hold on an EPA nominee in protest of the agency's TRI proposals. As a result, EPA agreed to drop its consideration of switching annual reporting to every other year. However, EPA moved ahead with a final rule raising the threshold for detailed reporting. Award for Most Overdue Effort — FOIA Improvement The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was originally passed in 1966, amended in 1974, and bolstered with the Electronic Freedom of Information Act in 1994. In the past few years, there had been little effort to improve the nation’s safety net for access to government information. However, in 2006, both the House and Senate seriously considered legislation to speed up FOIA and relieve agency backlogs, and agencies implemented an Executive Order to improve FOIA. Two FOIA bills, sponsored by Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), were well received in both the House and the Senate. The Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National (OPEN) Government Act and the Faster FOIA Act contained provisions to allow the public to recoup legal costs for challenging FOIA denials in court; mediate disputes between those requestors and federal agencies; and establish a commission to study FOIA backlog problems and recommend improvements. July brought FOIA Improvement Plans from all the federal agencies, as required by Executive Order 13392, issued in 2005. While the improvement plans met with considerable criticism, the executive order is still widely viewed as a significant acknowledgement of the importance of FOIA. Openness advocates hope the progress made on the bills in the Senate in 2006 indicates that similar legislation will advance in 2007. Award for Most Obvious Bad Idea — Closure of EPA Libraries President Bush's budget proposal, released in early February, included a whopping 80 percent cut in EPA's library budget from 2006 funding levels, dropping it from $2.5 million to only $500,000. The EPA libraries are a vital component of the agency, providing scientists, government personnel, and the public with access to important environmental and health information. Opponents of the measure said that there was no logical reason to hit such a fundamental and worthwhile arm of EPA with such a drastic budget cut except to cripple the agency's libraries. In response to the cuts, EPA has started closing regional libraries around the country, including the agency's Headquarters library. The agency also plans to discontinue the Online Library System, an electronic catalogue, without which regional libraries will be unable to locate individual holdings. Award for Most Confusing — Proliferation of Sensitive But Unclassified Information Categories Despite there being no government-wide policies or procedures on "sensitive but unclassified" (SBU) information, more that 100 different SBU designations have been created by federal agencies to restrict public access to government information. Federal agencies lack uniform rules governing who makes such decisions and how such information is then handled, making the management of SBU information confusing even to them. In a GAO report issued this year, first responders "reported that the multiplicity of designations and definitions not only causes confusion but leads to an alternating feast or famine of information." The government has finally recognized the seriousness of the problem and begun efforts to create an Information Sharing Environment to ensure easier management and facilitate faster sharing of information between agencies and different levels of government. A substantial project within this effort will be to reign in the large number of SBU designations. Honorable Mention for Most Confusing — National Archives’ Reclassification On Feb. 21, Matthew M. Aid of the National Security Archive disclosed the scope of a multiple-agency reclassification program. The extensive reclassification program appears to be a backlash to a 1995 executive order by President Clinton that required government agencies to declassify all historical records that were 25 years or older, with national security exceptions. Dissatisfied with the results of this order, government agencies began removing declassified documents from the shelves of the National Archives and considering them for reclassification. What made the matter even more confusing was that many of the documents did not contain any sensitive information. Some of the reclassified documents dated back to World War II, others contained embarrassing details about the government, and still others were easily available to the public — such as some that were published by the State Department and for sale at Amazon.com. Over 55,000 pages of documents were reclassified, of which the National Archives estimates that one-third should not have been removed. Once the program became known, the reclassification was suspended and an audit was conducted. The National Archive now plans to implement procedures to ensure that “re-review and withdrawal actions are rare.” Award for Most Offensive Stonewalling — Congressional Review of Katrina Response Committees in both the House and Senate held more than 15 hearings in 2006 to investigate exactly what went wrong in the preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina. Determining the timeline of what officials knew and when they knew it, relative to actions taken, were essential to those investigations. The Bush administration, however, refused to disclose relevant communications and prevented key officials, like Homeland Security Advisor Frances Fragos Townsend and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, from testifying before Congress. The lack of cooperation from the White House made it nearly impossible for Congress to exercise effective oversight of the federal government's preparedness, whether in response to natural disaster or terrorist attack. The White House claimed throughout the hearings that it was protecting the confidentiality of presidential advisors. Award for Worst Fumble — Chemical Security Despite ongoing bipartisan efforts to craft balanced chemical security legislation, which had made progress through appropriate committees in both the House and Senate, Congress passed a chemical security amendment to the 2007 DHS spending bill. The language is a retreat from stronger, bipartisan bills pending in both houses. The agreement exempts approximately 3,000 drinking water and waste water facilities, keeps DHS from requiring safer technologies, and fails to preserve state and local governments' authority to set stronger security standards than the federal government (such as those currently in place in New Jersey). In addition, the appropriations provisions failed to allow any substantive public accountability, meaning people living near chemical facilities won’t be able to get answers to simple and reasonable questions such as: “Is my family safe?” and “What risks are there in living here?” Award for Best Court Decision — Dismissal of Data Quality Act Case An appeals court decision dealt a blow to what many consider frivolous challenges to sound science made under the Data Quality Act (DQA). On March 6, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Salt Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce under DQA. DQA has been used by industry to slow action on important health and safety regulations and pressure agencies to remove or revise information. The Fourth Circuit found that the act does not allow for judicial review and that the plaintiffs had not shown injury and thus lacked standing. The suit requested court intervention on a 2003 challenge by the plaintiffs with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), requesting underlying data on a sodium study the institute had conducted. The case set up a test of DQA's authority and was watched closely by both sides of the DQA debate. Award for Worst Court Decision — Acceptance of Increased Use of State Secrets Privilege Based on the 1953 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Reynolds, the state secrets privilege allows the executive branch to declare certain materials or topics exempt from disclosure or review. The administration has repeatedly used the state secrets privilege to compel the courts to dismiss lawsuits brought by previous detainees, such as a German man who had been held in Afghanistan for five months after being mistaken for a suspected terrorist with the same name. The Justice Department also claimed state secrets privilege when it asked the courts to throw out three lawsuits against the NSA’s warrantless wiretap program. Additionally, the state secrets privilege was used to shut down a lawsuit by national security whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, an ex-translator for the FBI, who was fired after accusing co-workers of security breaches and intentionally slow work performance. While the state secrets privilege is likely a necessary power, many advocates believe the government is abusing the authority to avoid court review and scrutiny of its more questionable and potentially embarrassing actions. Unfortunately, many of the courts are accepting the government’s claims with little questioning.