Freedom of Information Act

Freedom of Information Act Documents

We at Tennessee Heartwood take the right of the public to be duly informed of the workings of government. The Freedom of Information Act helps ensure that access. We've written and been party to FOIA's over the years. In the spirit of the Act's intent, this page is both a tutorial for those who may wish to write their own, and as a repository of information gathered over the years on the workings of the Forest Service and other government agencies. This is important, as the Act allows a waiver of fees for such requests only if "disclosure of the information is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester." 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(A)(iii). By keeping this information available to the public, we justify these waivers.

First of all, this guide to writing FOIA's is pretty good. It gets you into the language, structure, and challenges to getting a FOIA written, and the request filled.

How and When to Use the Freedom of Information Act.- Outline of the FOIA Law, fee waivers, categorical exclusions/censoring, timeline, how to effectively write a FOIA, FOIA Appeals, Examples of Using FOIAs for good government and transparancy

few tips from our experience with the Forest Service:

Forests generally have a FOIA coordinator. Requests go through that staffer.-
It's probably good to go ahead and give the coordinator a heads up about your request. The more helpful ones will help you with wording your request well enough to where you don't have repeated kickbacks to you asking for clarification on a document.
If you are looking for a very specific doc, you shouldn't have too much trouble. Once the request becomes general enough to cover a category (ex: "all notes and correspondence on turkey management"), you better get as specific as you can- or expect a more drawn out process.
There isn't really a hard standard as to what should require a FOIA request. We have sometimes gotten things we were asked for just through an email, and other times have had to go through the FOIA process. Generally, the more docs asked, the more likely that a FOIA will be required.
Asking for electronic copies will take less time and trouble than asking for a hard copy.
Requests for notes or correspondence between staff is much more likely to result in a FOIA requirement. Names of non-staff in such correspondence are likely to be blacked out.
The LBL request below is an example of how the agency can stretch an exemption that allows censoring portions of a request by declaring very mundane things as somehow "proprietary".

Land Between the Lakes

FOIA on the LBL's Forest-Wide Inventories, written by Jim Scheff of Kentucky Heartwood.

The Request. Good example of what a FOIA should look like.
The Documents. Lots of censoring of documents by the Forest Service in these docs.
A Presentation on the LBL that has Choice Stuff from the FOIA.

Cherokee National Forest

Citico Creek Timber Sale 2009-2013.

The Request
Documents. It's a lot of stuff: shapefiles of project maps, analyses, agency correspondence.

FOIA on the South Zone's research and internal consultations on their Supplemental Soils Report. The agency looked at the environmental effects of several recent timber sales, including erosion, soil compaction, and the effects of skid roads. While a synopsis of this work was publicly released, much of it remained unpublished, including expenses on mitigating the effects of one of these sales. Much of this was censored under b5 exemptions, so we appealed the initial release. The second release still has a great deal of blackouts, but it does reveal a considerable amount of information that was not made available in the first request.