In this week’s FOIA round-up, Alaska natives sued the Trump Administration for concealing information regarding oil drilling, an environmental advocacy group shows that the bulk of U.S. farm aid goes to wealthy farmers, and members of the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement draw public scrutiny after going on pricey international vacations.
See a great use of public records we missed? Send over your favorite FOIA stories via email, on Twitter, or on Facebook, and maybe we will include them in the next roundup. And if you’d like even more inspiration, read past roundups.
Alaskans sue Department of the Interior over oil development
Alaskans Natives have joined with environmental groups in a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior for allegedly failing to disclose information about the impact of oil development in protected Arctic wildlife lands.
The lawsuit, Gwich’in Steering Committee et al v. U.S. Dept of the Interior et al argues that the DOI intentionally ignored repeated Freedom of Information Act requests about plans for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Local activists say their records requests have been blocked for months.
Read the full story on Reuters here.
Records reveal federal agriculture aid favors wealthy farmers
A Washington-based non-profit called Environmental Working Group requested data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture about federal aid granted to farmers. The request and resulting report showed that said the top 1% of aid recipients received an average of more than $180,000 while the bottom 80% were paid less than $5,000 in aid.
This specific federal aid program was to compensate farmers for losses incurred due to the trade war with China.
Read the full story on Reuters here.
Los Angeles pension trustees spend big on vacation
The Los Angeles Times reviewed over 1,300 pages of trip brochures, travel logs, and expense vouchers from the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association, or LARCERA, which was released through a request under the California Public Records Act.
One of the LARCERA trustees, Lieutenant Shawn Kehoe of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, personally accumulated $135,000 in travel expenses for trips to Australia and India.
Read the Los Angeles’s full story here.
Iowa officials find that their state may have violated public records law
The Iowa Public Information Board suggested that Iowa State University has violated the state’s open records law by refusing to release documents to leaders of the non-profit organization 4-H.
The state university declined to respond to 4-H’s open records request for four months. Iowa State’s public records office said that the requested files were exempt from public records requests under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA.
The State regulators issued a probable cause report, arguing that FERPA did not provide an appropriate basis for delaying the release of 4H’s records.
Read the Des Moines Register’s reporting on the story here.
Read a great FOIA-based news story we should highlight? Let us know and maybe we can include it in our next roundup! Send it over via email, on Twitter, or on Facebook.
Image by Steve Chase/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services via Flickr and is licensed under CC BY 2.0
