Ryan Zinke's office takes control of national monuments' FOIA requests

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By Dino Grandoni

The Trump administration’s top environmental policymakers are engaged in a new war with their adversaries — over how much information to release to the media and outside groups, who are often perceived as enemies, as part of a heavy stream of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

At both the Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department, news outlets and nonprofit organizations have uncovered meeting schedules and travel manifests through FOIA requests that illustrate the ties top officials have forged with players in industries they are tasked with regulating. FOIA requests have also shed light on EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s taxpayer-funded travel habits.

In turn: Some high-level officials at both EPA and Interior are keeping closer tabs on these FOIA requests, while at least at the EPA — according to those who have filed such requests — bureaus drag their feet in responding, Juliet Eilperin and I reported in a piece out this morning.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2017/12/15/the-energy-202-ryan-zinke-s-office-takes-control-of-national-monuments-foia-requests/5a32c36230fb0469e883fbc0/?utm_term=.f000e3228f4f

[highplainsdem]

1. K&R. More info here from the original article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/12/15/trump-environmental-officials-are-keeping-tight-rein-over-stampede-of-foia-requests/

Since the 1906 Antiquities Act empowers presidents to establish national monuments on federal lands and waters deemed worth of protection, the review of 27 national monuments spanned Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as the Agriculture Department’s Forest Service and the Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In early November, as Zinke was finalizing his official monuments recommendations to the White House, Clarice Julka, a FOIA officer in Zinke’s office, emailed other FOIA officers in 11 different Interior offices, including the Park Service and BLM, to inform them she and FOIA officers in the secretary’s office would handle requests pertaining to the monument review going forward.

Julka told the staffers to collect records that responded to FOIA requests about the monuments, and forward them to the secretary’s office rather than send them directly to the news outlets, corporations, nonprofits and other groups making the requests.

“This would also include any FOIA requesting records pertaining to your bureaus’ participation in the review of any monument,” Julka wrote in the Nov. 6 email obtained by The Washington Post.