D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles is fighting back against an open-government initiative, saying the measure is misguided and unnecessary given the high level of transparency Mayor Adrian Fenty has brought to city government.
But supporters of the initiative said Nickles is living a fantasy and the Fenty administration goes out of its way to block the public’s access to city information.
“It struck me as a bit absurd,” said Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh of Nickles’ testimony against her initiative. “The facts are to the contrary, and pretty much everybody knows this.”
Good-government advocates, lawyers and union officials lined up earlier this month to sing the praises of Cheh’s proposed legislation, which would create an Open Government Office that would advise agencies on public records laws and have the power to sue an agency that failed to comply with the law.
Many of the same speakers also took strong aim at the Fenty administration, and Nickles in particular, saying the attorney general has blocked several requests for no legitimate reason.
“No matter which agency one seeks information from, no matter how simple and straightforward the request, whenever a representative from the Attorney General’s Office is involved, the responses are typically overdue, incomplete and unnecessarily obstructionist,” said attorney Roy Morris.
But Nickles said the city has made strong gains under the Fenty administration, particularly in posting large amounts of city data online, and has become an “internationally known leader in government transparency.”
He said the city is answering more public records requests at a faster rate than previous years and added that Cheh’s proposal is unnecessary and costly for a cash-strapped city.
“While the legislation contains several good ideas that [Fenty] is currently in the process of implementing,” Nickles said in a statement, “it goes astray by adopting an unnecessarily punitive and adversarial approach that casts government agencies and their employees as villains to be punished and pursued.”
Cheh’s legislation would allow for city employees who flagrantly break public records laws to be punished, and would shorten the length of time the city has to answer public records requests.
Instead, Nickles has asked the D.C. Council to extend the length of time city agencies can answer public records requests to beyond the currently mandated 25 days, saying Superior Court judges have become “increasingly unsympathetic” to the city’s requests for extra time.
