Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is demanding to know how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) plans to comply with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests when the relevant staff have been put on administrative leave.
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. laid off or eliminated HHS staffers in charge of handling FOIA requests at the CDC, Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, according to reporting earlier this month.
The move raised alarm among lawmakers and health care stakeholders as Kennedy had vowed to usher in an era of “radical transparency” at federal health agencies.
“The elimination of staff responsible for facilitating FOIA strongly implies an effort by the Administration to prevent the public from obtaining information about their government that they are entitled to request. I urge you to provide detailed information responsive to the requests included in this letter to bring transparency to the FOIA operations within the CDC,” Connolly wrote in a letter to acting CDC Director Susan Monarez.
Since 1967, the public has been entitled to request almost any public records from any federal agency. Under the law, a response to a FOIA request is required to be sent out within 20 days of the agency receiving the request. Certain records are exempted from FOIA requests.
“The press and the public have recently used the FOIA process to seek records related to the President’s sudden termination of thousands of employees at Health and Human Services (HHS), including CDC,” Connolly wrote.
“These layoffs and reductions in CDC’s capacity come at a time when communities across the United States are struggling to manage infectious disease outbreaks,” he added. “Now more than ever, maintaining transparency about the operations of the broader HHS—and CDC in particular—is crucial to understanding the government’s capacity to respond to such crises.”
Connolly asked that Monarez provide the Oversight Committee information on how the CDC plans to comply with FOIA; the number of effective full-time employees currently working at her agency’s FOIA office; their titles and employments status; and information on how the CDC’s FOIA office has performed since President Trump began his second term.
He also asked for any correspondence between the CDC and the Trump administration.
The Hill has reached out to the CDC for comment.
While taking questions from reporters earlier this week, Kennedy said the FOIA offices at federal health agencies would all be restored.
“We’re going to make it much easier for people to to get the information. We’re going to try to post as much as we can. We’re going to start a website with all former FOIA requests and the documents that were produced, so people don’t have to do it again and again. And we’re going to try to get as close as we can to total transparency in this agency,” Kennedy said.
