Associated Press: Lawmakers eye more exemptions to target “abuse’” of FOIA

DOVER, Del. (AP) — Democratic lawmakers are proposing to give public officials in Delaware more reasons to deny requests for public records under the state’s Freedom of Information Act and require people seeking public records to pay new fees.

The measure cleared a Democrat-led Senate committee Wednesday after a public hearing in which representatives of open-government groups spoke against it and warned that it could lead to more government secrecy.

The legislation allows government workers to deny FOIA requests that they consider to be “unreasonably broad, unduly burdensome, intended to disrupt the essential functions of the public body,” or “abusive.”

The bill was filed on behalf of Democratic Attorney General Kathleen Jenning’s office, which is charged with reviewing petitions from people whose requests for public records have been denied. …

Claire Snyder-Hall, program director for Common Cause Delaware, a good-government group, said the bill would allow public bodies to deny FOIA requests that they consider “inconvenient or embarrassing.”

“How will ambiguous and expansive words like “unduly burdensome,” “intended to disrupt” and “abusive” be interpreted in practice?” she asked.

“The problem is that the language in the bill is so broad that it could easily be used by corrupt officials to hide information they do not want public to know about,” Synder-Hall added. ”…. It is a basic premise of our system of government that we cannot rely on the goodwill of people in power.”