The FOIA queue is the quietest scandal in Washington
Public records laws still exist. The waits now outlast the administrations they were meant to check.
The Freedom of Information Act is written like a promise. File a request, wait a reasonable time, receive the record or a lawful exemption. In practice the promise has been replaced by a waiting room.
Independent reporters, who do not have a network's litigators on retainer, live in that room. They file. They appeal. They are told the search is ongoing. Seasons change. The official named in the request takes a job at a firm that used to be the subject of the request.
Delay is not a glitch. Delay is a method. A document that arrives after the vote, after the hearing, after the nomination, is a document that can be published as history. History does not vote.
This paper will keep a running account of outstanding public-records fights that independent desks are waging. Not as a vibe. As a list: agency, request, date filed, date due, date ignored. The palace can survive a mean column. It has a harder time surviving a dated ledger.
If you have a FOIA number and a stone wall, send it. The record is the story. Everything else is commentary.