Forest Service Settles FOIA Case

by Caroline Byrd

The words of the settlement agreement had a satisfying ring:

"1. The Forest Service agrees that…the Freedom of Information Act, as amended,
requires the Forest Service to make available by computer telecommunications or by
other electronic means Forest Service administrative appeal final decisions issued on or
after November 1, 1996."

"2. The Forest Service agrees to complete by June 30, 1999 the process of making
available on the World Wide Web final decisions under the Forest Services
administrative appeal regulations…"
 
With these words, WOC’s lawsuit against the Forest Service has ended. Beginning this June, and continuing indefinitely thereafter, the agency will publish its final appeal decisions on the Internet.

WOC executive director Dan Heilig applauded the agreement, noting that having access to previous rulings will help parties appealing the agency’s decisions. "Forest Service decisions are binding on the agency, and often establish important precedents concerning a wide range of resource management issues," Heilig said. "Citizens will now be able to hold the agency more accountable and demand greater consistency in land use decisions."

Heilig added that "the lack of public disclosure of decisions issued by the Forest Service in response to appeals led to a kind of ‘secret agency law’ where the agency had a library of its own decisions that was not available to the general public except by cumbersome and complicated Freedom of Information Act procedures." Under the old system, Heilig noted, "only the appellant and the agency knew what the decision said, creating a situation where citizens all over the country were arguing with the agency about issues and interpretations that had already been decided at the national level."

The Forest Service’s decisions will be available this June in its "electronic reading room" on the World Wide Web at: www.fs.fed.us/im/foia

Meanwhile, the Department of Interior (DOI), which was also named as a defendant in the suit, refuses to discuss settlement options. Apparently DOI believes it has no obligation under the Electronic Freedom of Information Act to publish decisions on the World Wide Web because it makes its decisions available to the public through an expensive subscription service, a position which Heilig finds untenable. He believes that DOI’s position is short-sighted and unfair, and "results in a system where the affluent and those in power have access to government information, while the ordinary citizen is left in the dark, severely handicapped by an inability to find out how or what the agency has decided."

Among the decisions WOC hopes to force DOI to publish are those issued by the Board of Land Appeals, or IBLA. IBLA decides cases for the Bureau of Land Management, which manages more than 264 million acres of public lands, of which 18 million acres are located in Wyoming.