Government Offers Refunds for Katrina Trailers

On Jan. 17, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced refunds for potentially toxic trailers purchased between July 2006 and July 2007, the period trailers manufactured in response to Hurricane Katrina were sold.

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FISA Fight Heats Up in Senate

The Senate is continuing its debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). On Jan. 31, President Bush signed a 15-day extension of the Protect America Act (PAA) to allow the Senate to further debate and vote on a modified extension of PAA. A provision providing immunity to telecommunications companies remains a contentious issue.

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Public Interest Board Attempts to Improve Declassification

On Jan. 9, the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) released a report, Improving Declassification: A Report to the President from the Public Interest Declassification Board, outlining a series of recommendations to improve the declassification of government information.

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SBU Gets New Letters and Maybe a Better Policy

The Department of Defense (DoD) is finalizing policies to streamline categories used to restrict technically unclassified documents. The new policy to eliminate the multiple agency-specific "Sensitive But Unclassified" (SBU) procedures and replace them with a common set of "Controlled Unclassified Information" (CUI) standards is currently under presidential review.

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OPEN Government Act Signed into Law

On Dec. 31, 2007, President Bush signed the OPEN Government Act (S. 2488), which includes long-sought reforms of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Though some important provisions were dropped in order to reach bipartisan agreement in Congress, the bill creates incentives to reduce agency backlogs of FOIA requests, increases reporting requirements, and increases the scope of who can make requests and what entities are covered by FOIA.

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Big Farms to Get Free Pass in Reporting Air Pollution from Animal Waste

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a Dec. 28, 2007, proposal in a second attempt to exempt farms from reporting air pollution caused by animal waste and to reduce information available about toxins at the local level.

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Information Magic Eight-Ball

Over the past year, there has been a great deal of activity on issues related to government transparency and secrecy, but it can remain difficult to figure out exactly what all the discussions, reports and hearings actually mean. To try to get to the bottom of this murky issue, we are breaking out our Magic Eight-Ball of Information Policy to ask a few key questions about the past year — the progress and setbacks, laid out in simple terms. We wish there was a better approach, but unfortunately, 2007 was that kind of year for government transparency, with vague and unclear answers for most questions.

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