A year later, this creep toward secrecy has become an all-out slide.<\/p>\n
As director<\/a> of the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project<\/a> at the University of Florida, I track the state of government transparency in the U.S. What has changed since January 2025 is unprecedented.<\/p>\n Clouds in the Sunshine State<\/p>\n Florida is a good example of this slide. Once viewed as a leader in transparency<\/a>, the Sunshine State now charges exorbitant copy fees that discourage average people from requesting public records<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to the nonprofit MuckRock, 24% of public records requests in Florida come with a copy fee<\/a>, averaging US$1,623. Only Oregon charges fees more often, at 28% of the time. Fees are intended to help agencies cover the cost of large requests, but they tend to be arbitrary<\/a> and are often used<\/a> as a way to get pesky people to go away.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s assuming you even get the information you want. One of my own studies from 2019 indicated that, on average, if you requested a public record in Florida, you would receive it about 39% of the time<\/a>, placing the state 31st in the nation.<\/p>\n In 2025, MuckRock put the percentage dipping lower, at 35%<\/a>. In March 2026, it was at 34%<\/a>.<\/p>\n In Florida, more and more government agencies are thwarting the public\u2019s right to know, including attempts to hide the details behind Alligator Alcatraz<\/a>, the temporary immigrant detention center built in the Florida Everglades<\/a> in June 2025. The state\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, office has pushed cities to be more transparent while withholding its own records<\/a>.<\/p>\n Members of the state Legislature are attempting to strengthen the public records law<\/a>. This would improve transparency in Florida\u2019s state government, but I\u2019d argue it doesn\u2019t go far enough. Other states, such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, have implemented stronger laws, including independent enforcement of their sunshine laws<\/a>, to ensure their governments comply.<\/p>\n It starts at the top<\/p>\n State and local governments appear to be taking their cues from the federal government.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump\u2019s administration heralds itself as the most transparent in history<\/a>, pointing to the president\u2019s willingness to talk informally to the press or directly to the public through social media.<\/p>\n While that may be one definition of transparency, the federal government\u2019s willingness to provide documents that show what the government is doing \u2013 not just what it says it is doing \u2013 has been eviscerated under the second Trump administration. Examples include:<\/p>\n Typically, the Department of Justice releases annual statistics<\/a> on FOIA requests every March. When I examined initial reports posted in January, when just 11 agencies had provided their reports, backlogs \u2013 that is, requests that remain unresolved after a year \u2013 had increased 67% from the previous fiscal year. The time to process simple requests nearly doubled.<\/p>\n Plummeting to historical depths<\/p>\n In order to understand how secrecy in the United States now compares to historical precedent, I reached out to people who have researched freedom of information for decades, some going back to the 1970s.<\/p>\n I asked them a simple question: How does the current state of affairs in freedom of information compare historically?<\/p>\n Here is what they told me:<\/p>\n Jane Kirtley<\/a> is a longtime FOIA scholar from the University of Minnesota who wrote in 2006<\/a>, \u201cThe Bush administration\u2019s contempt for the public\u2019s right to know amounts to an organized assault on freedom of information that is unprecedented since the enactment of the Freedom of Information Act 40 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, in comparison? \u201cAbysmal,\u201d she wrote to me via email. \u201cIt was abundantly clear from the moment Elon Musk and his \u2018musketeers\u2019 invaded and pillaged government electronic records that we have entered a new era of deletion, obfuscation, fabrication and utter contempt for the concept of data integrity and the public\u2019s right to know.\u201d<\/p>\n Thomas Susman<\/a>, who helped craft the 1974 FOIA amendments and currently assists the American Bar Association, wrote in 2005<\/a> that increasing delays and backlogs threatened FOIA\u2019s intended purpose.<\/p>\n In February 2026, he wrote to me that the \u201carc of the FOIA universe has for six decades bent toward greater public access to government information \u2212 until now. If \u2018democracy dies in darkness\u2019 (according to The Washington Post\u2019s official slogan), America\u2019s democracy is threatened with becoming dead meat. We\u2019ve survived the Civil War, the Great Depression, Vietnam, Watergate and more. If we fight back hard enough, this too shall pass, though not quickly, and likely with lasting scars.\u201d<\/p>\n Patrice McDermott<\/a> directed Open the Government from 2006 to 2017 and pointed in 2007<\/a> to an underlying tension throughout government: \u201cthe ability \u2013 and willingness \u2013 to harness the promise of digital information for public access and accountability while not abusing its potential for control of that information.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, she writes that, as Benjamin Franklin put it, we \u201chave a Republic \u2026 if (we) can keep it\u201d and are committed to the fight for our constitutional form of government.<\/p>\n Perhaps advances can be made to reverse the secrecy trend and carry out the intentions of the Freedom of Information Act, as expressed by Lyndon B. Johnson<\/a> upon its adoption nearly 60 years ago: \u201cI signed this measure with a deep sense of pride that the United States is an open society in which the people\u2019s right to know is cherished and guarded.\u201d<\/p>\n This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a>, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: David Cuillier<\/a>, University of Florida<\/a> <\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n David Cuillier has received funding from the Democracy Fund and John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to study the state of freedom of information. He is a board member of the National Freedom of Information Coalition and he coordinates national Sunshine Week. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By all measures, the ability to see what the government is up to in the United States has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[409,28,6765,30,29,87303,87302,87301,13811,1360,2512],"class_list":{"0":"post-185625","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-florida-everglades","11":"tag-florida-headlines","12":"tag-florida-news","13":"tag-freedom-of-information","14":"tag-freedom-of-information-act","15":"tag-government-transparency","16":"tag-public-records","17":"tag-the-sunshine-state","18":"tag-university-of-florida"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"US](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/e18c53d5550ee52f3ca6353307ee508f.jpeg\"\/)
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