Agencies Withhold Documents About Closures of Private Businesses in Government Shutdown
21st March 2014
In last October’s government shutdown, the Obama administration closed down, or blocked access to, many private businesses that had been allowed to operate in earlier shutdowns, such as during the Clinton administration. After lawyers and legal commentators suggested that these closures of private businesses were illegal, and pointed out that they were an unexplained departure from past agency practice, I filed a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the agencies that carried out these closures — the National Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the Department of the Interiors — seeking to find out which officials were responsible for these improper closures, and how the decision to close them was made.
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