WASHINGTON — Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its Phase II Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) final rule updating and modernizing the Agency’s FOIA regulations to better serve the American people. The final rule will promote transparency and accountability, make FOIA more affordable, and expedite access to information to communities potentially experiencing disproportionate and adverse human health or environmental effects.
FOIA is a critical tool to promote transparency, accountability, and public trust as we take on the climate crisis, advance environmental justice, ensure scientific integrity, and protect public health.
“Today’s action is another example of EPA’s commitment to open, efficient, and effective government and fulfilling EPA’s pledge to do better at meeting the needs of communities suffering from disproportionately high pollution levels regardless of race, regardless of income, regardless of zip code,” said Jeffrey Prieto, EPA General Counsel. “The FOIA Phase II Rule takes significant steps towards ensuring the public can access information about the EPA’s efforts to protect its health and the environment.”
Notably, this Phase II FOIA Regulations Update establishes a new standard, in addition to the existing “compelling need” standard, for expediting EPA’s response to FOIA requests for records when there is a pressing need to inform a community that is potentially experiencing disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects. EPA will also waive fees for such FOIA requests.
The Phase II FOIA Rule also removes barriers by raising the threshold for when requesters will be charged fees, benefiting all requesters, as well as making other changes to bring EPA’s fee rates and other regulatory provisions into compliance with the FOIA Statute, government wide policy, and relevant case law.
The rule furthers EPA’s goals to promote transparency and build public trust in Agency actions. For example, EPA makes several changes to how it calculates and charges fees for responding to FOIA requests. These changes modernize the Agency’s FOIA fee structure. Additionally, EPA updated the FOIA fee rates and will no longer charge any fees to a requester if the Agency accumulates less than $250 of chargeable fees, a more than 1,500 percent increase from the current $14 threshold. The Phase II FOIA Rule also updates portions of EPA’s FOIA regulations that have not been updated since at least 2002.
Today’s action modernizing EPA’s FOIA regulations is the continuation of EPA’s earlier initiatives to enhance transparency through improvement of the Agency’s FOIA program. As a result of EPA’s focused efforts:
- EPA eliminated its backlog of FOIA appeals and reduced its average appeal response time from 256.93 days in FY 2019 to 13.66 days in FY 2022, a 95% reduction.
- EPA increased the speed of issuing decisions on applications for expedited processing, reducing the average time to issue these decisions from 21.06 days in FY 2020 to only 3.39 days in FY 2022, an overall 84% improvement.
- EPA dramatically reduced its backlog of FOIA responses as reported to the Department of Justice from a high of 2,761 at the end of FY 2018 to 1,537 at the end of FY 2022.
The signed rule will be posted on EPA’s Freedom of Information Act page when it is published in the Federal Register.
from EPA News Releases https://ift.tt/QuSqdzv