According to the latest Interior Department quarterly report on its backlog of unanswered Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is the hands-down winner as its least responsive agency. As of the end of the second quarter of Fiscal Year 2024, BLM’s FOIA backlog is 1,598 requests. That’s more than one-third of the total backlog for all 14 Interior agencies combined, and nearly double the biggest backlog of the next tardiest Interior agency, the National Park Service.
Unfortunately, BLM’s FOIA backlog has been getting worse, growing almost 12% since just a year ago.
Since BLM manages one-tenth of the entire land area of the U.S., its FOIA non-responsiveness means that vast amounts of information about both new and ongoing operations are off-limits. We do not know how its management is affecting wildlife, sub-surface operations, and cultural resources.
Challenging BLM’s Secrecy
This March, the Government Accountability Office issued a report on FOIA which found that government-wide, the FOIA backlog had increased by more than 50% in less than a decade. One of GAO’s key recommendations was that agencies use “proactive disclosures” to reduce the need to rely on FOIA for basic, frequently requested information.
To that end, this April PEER organized a letter to BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning with four other conservation groups. The letter pointed out:
“Currently, we are experiencing the impact of this backlog firsthand, between our five groups we have approximately 97 FOIA requests pending and 10 FOIA lawsuits (including one that involves 13 FOIA requests and another that involves three FOIA requests) awaiting resolution. This backlog not only impedes our ability to access vital information but also places a significant strain on agency resources and contributes to unnecessary litigation.”
Parenthetically, almost all of the PEER litigation against BLM is for records the agency simply delays releasing, typically not even offering an expected production date. We are currently litigating to obtain basic information about range conditions, waivers granted to industry for oil, gas, and mining operations in habitat of federally listed species, as well as for annual totals of assaults on staff and violent crimes, among other things.
Conversely, requests we do not litigate typically sit unanswered, often for years and, in some cases, long after the requested records have lost relevance.
The letter went on to list several categories of information that BLM could start affirmatively posting that would eliminate the need for these groups to even have to file a number of their FOIA requests, let alone litigate to obtain the data. The suggested categories of information that BLM should start disclosing include landscape health data, staffing levels, permit applications, and data about wilderness and wildlife management.
In July, we received an answer from Director Stone-Manning—a relatively prompt response compared to most BLM FOIA related responses, even considering that the statutory FOIA response period is 20 working days. In her letter, the Director indicated that the agency has “enlisted contract support at the beginning of fiscal year 2024 dedicated to reducing the backlog.”
In terms of proactive disclosure, she only indicated that BLM is “also working to make previously internal information, such as the wild horse and burro database, accessible to the public to reduce FOIA requests and facilitate easier access to requested data.” While this is a welcome development, it involves a relatively small database (there is only an estimated 75,000 wild horses and burros on BLM land compared with 1.5 million cattle). This is equivalent to trying to reduce an iceberg one ice cube at a time.
Disappointingly, Director Stone-Manning said her goal was “to achieve a 10 percent reduction in the backlog by the end of the fiscal year” which would not get even BLM back to the backlog level from a year ago. She added that one strategic approach involves “pursuing improved requester outreach and collaboration.” While our letter was signed by representatives from five groups, she responded only to PEER but suggested we should “feel free to share a copy of this response with the cosigners of your letter.” So much for outreach and collaboration.
Priorities in Reverse
The basic problem is that the current and traditional BLM leadership frankly do not believe in transparency. They do not fundamentally respect the public’s right to know how their own lands are being managed. In short, BLM does its business with various commercial interests behind closed doors in a fashion fully deserving of the nickname “The Bureau of Livestock & Mining.”
As a result, we do not expect much progress in reducing BLM’s mountain of unanswered record requests and we remain convinced that the principal means of obtaining timely information from BLM is to sue the agency.
Chandra Rosenthal is the Director of PEER’s Rocky Mountain Office located in Denver, Colorado.