Transparency News, 9/22/25

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Links to watch today’s FOIA Council committee meetings, as well as the full council meeting, are available here. Of particular importance to VCOG is the meetings subcommittee at 11:00. That’s where the straightforward bill Sen. Ebbin carried for us this past session — to reduce last-minute action on agenda items — has been reshaped into a much longer proposal. The new draft addresses posting requirements for state agencies, defines what is and isn’t considered “final action,” and even proposes exempting “advisory bodies” entirely. These changes are being advanced mostly by local governments and parliamentarians, and they move the bill further away from its original, public-friendly purpose. Tune in to see the discussion for yourself.

The Pentagon on Friday said reporters who cover the agency could access the building only if they agreed not to publish certain information, an unprecedented move that requires media outlets to hand the department vast control over what they publish. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, in a Friday evening email, said journalists could continue to enter the Defense Department only if they sign a note saying they will not publish classified information or some less sensitive documents that are not explicitly labeled as government secrets. The rule will take effect over the next two to three weeks.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/19/pentagon-limits-access-journalists-00574227

Welcome back to another edition of FOIA Files! This week, I’d like to direct your attention to a FOIA-centric story I published (Thursday) with two of my Bloomberg News colleagues: Zahra Hirji, a climate reporter, and Davey Alba, who writes about big tech. The story is based on hundreds of pages of documents I recently obtained from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It centers around Hurricanes Helene and Milton and the online conspiracies that sparked a barrage of threats directed towards officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which responded to the devastation.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-09-19/documents-reveal-a-deluge-of-threats-directed-at-fema

“Democracies die behind closed doors.” ~ U.S. District Judge Damon Keith, 2002

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