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Obama signs FOIA reform bill

President Barack Obama signed a bill Thursday aimed at improving the government's often-sluggish responses to Freedom of Information Act requests.

As the president put his signature on the measure in the Oval Office, he portrayed the legislation as largely an effort to make permanent changes his administration instituted in the handling of FOIA requests.

"Congress -- on a bipartisan basis -- has provided the tools -- legislation -- to codify some of the reforms we've already made and to expand more of these reforms so that government is more responsive," Obama said. "And I am very proud of all the work we've done to try to make government more open and responsive, but I know that people haven't always been satisfied with the speed with which they're getting responses and requests. Hopefully this is going to help and be an important initiative for us to continue on the reform path."

The bill, called the FOIA Improvement Act, codifies a presumption of disclosure that Obama re-instituted at the outset of his presidency, but which requesters say has done little to make recalcitrant agencies fork over information. That presumption is now in law and may give requesters a stronger hand in court, although it's unclear how much stronger since similar court-authored precedents are already on the books.

The bill also makes it harder for government to withhold certain kinds of information that's more than 25 years old, although the impact of that provision was narrowed as the legislation pinged back and forth between the House and Senate.

Obama acknowledged Thursday that while battles continue over what should and shouldn't be released, federal agencies are struggling to keep up with the requests that are streaming in. The bill contains some measures designed to speed the process, but it also will make FOIA requests even easier to file, which could bog the system down more. Another challenge: the legislation, which emerged as a consensus measure after years of debate in Congress, does not contain any additional funding.

"We're actually getting many more requests for FOIA than ever before. And so we've had to figure out ways that we can reform this to make it easier, faster, cheaper for people to get the information that they want," Obama said.

One of the sponsors of the legislation and a longtime champion of FOIA, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), hailed the signing of the bill Thursday, nearly 50 years after President Lyndon Johnson signed the first version of the federal public records access law.

“It is fitting that the original Freedom of Information Act shares its birthday with our republic itself, and that we celebrate it by ushering in the most significant reforms to our nation’s premier transparency law in 50 years. The FOIA Improvement Act brings FOIA into the digital age and ensures that sunshine, not secrecy, is the default setting of our government," Leahy said.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who introduced the bipartisan legislation with Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said in a statement: "From day one, my biggest priority in Congress has been to make government more open and responsive to the people it’s supposed to serve. I’m proud to finally see these bipartisan reforms, which I’ve been fighting to implement for years, become a reality.”