Sunshine Laws
An editorial in today's New York Times summarizes pending sunshine. This administration has gone out of its way to avoid the truth, hide the facts and obstruct the processes of an open and honest government. This kind of legislation is definitely a good thing.
In November 2001, while the world was focused on terrorism, President Bush issued an executive order making it significantly harder for historians and the public to gain access to a former president’s official papers. The House has a chance tomorrow to reverse this damaging decree.Mr. Bush’s decision effectively repealed the presumption of public availability enshrined in the Presidential Records Act of 1978, a post-Watergate reform that established that the treasure trove of historical material amassed by a president belongs to the American people.
In the place of these open government principles, Mr. Bush established cumbersome review procedures that give former presidents, and even their heirs, unprecedented authority to selectively withhold sensitive records indefinitely. The backlog of presidential document requests now extends to five years or longer, compared with 18 months in 2001, according to recent testimony in the House.
The bill to undo Mr. Bush’s order, sponsored by Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, and colleagues from both parties, would re-establish sensible procedures to ensure timely release of presidential documents. It would retract the authority Mr. Bush granted presidential descendants and vice presidents to withhold records.
The House Oversight Committee details the legislation:
- Overturning the Bush Executive Order. Under the Presidential Records Act, presidential records are supposed to be released to historians and the public 12 years after the end of a presidential administration. In November 2001, President George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13233 which overturned an executive order issued by President Reagan and gave current and former presidents and vice presidents broad authority to withhold presidential records or delay their release indefinitely. The Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007 would nullify the Bush executive order and establish procedures to ensure the timely release of presidential records.
- Establishing a Deadline for Review of Records. Under the Bush executive order, the Archivist must wait for both the current and former president to approve the release of presidential records, a review process that can continue indefinitely. Under the bill, the current and former president would have a set time period of no longer than 40 business days to raise objections to the release of these records by the Archivist.
- Limiting the Authority of Former Presidents to Withhold Presidential Records. Under the Reagan executive order, a former president could request that the incumbent president assert a claim of executive privilege and thereby stop the release of the records. If the incumbent president decided not to assert executive privilege, however, the records would be released unless the former president could persuade a court to uphold the former president’s assertion of the privilege. The Bush executive order reversed this process and required the incumbent president to sustain the executive privilege claim of the former president unless a person seeking access could persuade a court to reject the claim. In effect, the Bush order gave former presidents virtually unlimited authority to withhold presidential records through assertions of executive privilege. The legislation would restore the Reagan approach, giving the incumbent president the discretion to reject ill-founded assertions of executive privilege by former presidents.
- Requiring the President to Make Privilege Claims Personally. Under the Bush executive order, designees of the former president could assert privilege claims after the death of the president, in effect making the right to assert executive privilege an asset of the former president’s estate. The bill would make clear that the right to claim executive privilege is personal to current and former presidents and cannot be bequeathed to assistants, relatives, or descendants.
- Eliminating Executive Privilege Claims for Vice Presidents. In an unprecedented step, the Bush executive order authorized former vice presidents to assert executive privilege claims over vice presidential records. The bill restores the long-standing understanding that the right to assert executive privilege over presidential records is a right held only by presidents.
Plus, the Gavel has some YouTube.
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