WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) was sued by a watchdog group last week for allegedly dodging a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking information about ethics waivers and impartiality decisions.
“What was surprising is that we had sent the request to the contact they provided on their website to submit the requests and nine months later, they still claim they never got it,” said Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT).
After PPT filed the original request in early June 2021, the nonprofit attempted to contact FERC to check on the status at least three times over the next several months, according to Chamberlain.
“We don't know exactly what happened in this case, but as a hypothetical, the agencies can't be allowed to just ignore FOIA requests,” Chamberlain told Legal Newsline.
When PPT made a fourth attempt in early March 2022, FERC responded from the very same email address PPT had previously submitted the original request, according to PPT's press release.
“FERC’s response was to claim they could not locate the email, apparently upon the conclusion of furiously checking under all the agency’s office furniture, and suggested that PPT resubmit it,” Chamberlain said.
However, when FERC placed the burden on PPT to restart the FOIA process by resubmitting, it set back the request to the end of the line.
“If they wanted to just avoid doing something and claim they never received a request, it opens up the door for an agency to just simply ignore a request because they didn't want to deal with it by never acknowledging it,” Chamberlain said.
PPT seeks immediate judicial review because it has constructively exhausted its administrative remedies by the agency’s alleged failure to make a determination within the time period required by law.
“FERC’s oversight is around electricity grids, so they do have an impact on the general public's access to electricity and things like that,” Chamberlain said. “Its decisions include regulations around the electricity grids that are likely to be under their jurisdiction.”
PPT seeks declaratory and injunctive relief requiring FERC to promptly produce all non-exempt records responsive to its FOIA request and to provide indexes justifying the withholding of any responsive records withheld under any claims of exemption.
“We believe this is information that the public deserves to know because they need to know what potential conflicts of interest are out there and how ethics officials are handling them in each of the agencies,” Chamberlain added.