When Public Comments Aren’t Public: Land Agency Holding Records

• BLM declines to publish many public ‘scoping’ comments

• Land agency FOIA backlog up to three years long

By Bobby Magill, Bloomberg News, June 24, 2020

Usually when public comments are filed with a federal agency, they are made, well, public. Not so for the Bureau of Land Management, which is demanding that in some cases, such comments only be obtained through the cumbersome Freedom of Information Act.

Critics say the BLM’s action is part of a pattern shaping up in the Interior Department over the past year or more of delaying or denying requests for basic information from journalists and the public.

Read more here.