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Mississippi: The Secret State  

ANALYSIS

FOIA gives people access to workings of government for 40 years

By JEANNI ATKINS
MISSISSIPPI CENTER FOR FREEDOM OF INFORMATION

OXFORD --

Rarely do we think much about the sources of information swirling around us in the battle to sway people to accept a certain point of view on social issues and public policies. The massive public relations machinery of government, spin doctors on talk shows and in interviews, speeches of government officials and bloggers bombard the public with partisan positions on issues.

At the state and local level, we're also confronted with rhetoric and spin and are left to wonder what is fact and what is simply opinion. Where does the truth lie? How do we sift through the verbiage to find the nuggets of truth?

Fortunately, we have access to documents that reveal much about the workings of government and provide facts. In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law - albeit apparently reluctantly - a revolutionary piece of legislation 12 years in the making that transformed the process of learning the truth about government decision making.

The Freedom of Information Act - referred to as FOIA (foy-yuh) - put in the hands of citizens the tools to pry open the closed doors of government. Over the past 40 years, information squirreled away in documents hidden from public view has been disclosed that has contributed immeasurably to knowledge not only about the workings of government but the dangers to public safety and health that need to be corrected.

Mississippi enacted its own Public Records Act in 1983. Access to government records in the state also shows how tax dollars are being used or misspent and decisions made that are either beneficial or detrimental to the needs of citizens. Public records laws, in short, are a means to hold government accountable.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) refused to honor FOIA requests for names and addresses of recipients of $1.2 billion in Katrina assistance, claiming that disclosure of this information "would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." A federal appeals court in Atlanta, however, ordered FEMA to release these documents.

"The public interest in evaluating the appropriateness of FEMA's response to disasters is not only precisely the kind of public interest that meets the FOIA's core purpose of shedding light on what the government is up to," the court ruled, "the magnitude of this public interest is potentially enormous."

The court stated: "In light of FEMA's awesome statutory responsibility to prepare the nation for, and respond to, all national interests, including natural disasters and terrorist attacks, there is a powerful public interest in learning whether, and how well, it has met this responsibility."

Jeanni Atkins is a journalism professor at the University of Mississippi and is executive director of the Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information.