A story yesterday in the Washington Post, headlined "U.S. Judges Getting Disclosure Data Deleted: GAO Cites 661 Requests to Withhold Information From Ethics Act Reports," begins:
Nearly 600 times in recent years, a judicial committee acting in private has stripped information from reports intended to alert the public to conflicts of interest involving federal judges. The committee decided that the information removed might tend to endanger a particular judge or put his or her financial investments at risk, according to a study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress.Here is a link to the GAO report itself, titled: Federal Judiciary: Assessing and Formally Documenting Financial Disclosure Procedures Could Help Ensure Balance between Judges' Safety and Timely Public Access, GAO-04-696NI, June 30, 2004.In 55 instances, the committee withheld all information on the disclosure reports -- including details about outside income, gifts, business contracts, debts, stocks and the value of holdings. The study examined disclosure reports filed under the Ethics in Government Act from 1999 through 2002.
Specialists in judicial ethics said they were startled at the breadth of the excisions -- and particularly that the material cut included financial information that appeared to present little safety risk. * * *
In 1998, Congress passed legislation allowing judges to request redactions. The law authorized the U.S. Judicial Conference, in consultation with the U.S. Marshals Service, to delete specific information if it determined that the information could endanger a judge. The Judicial Conference is the principal policymaking body for the federal courts, and is chaired by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. The redaction provision is in place through 2005, when Congress will decide whether to make it permanent.
There are no similar provisions available for the president or members of Congress, whose reports are immediately available to the public on the Internet, in print and through computer terminals in the Cannon House Office Building. Officials of those branches do not consider the information a safety risk, the GAO report said. There is no known case in which the reports have been used to harm a judge or another public figure.
In 2002, 76 requesters received disclosure reports from the judiciary. Lawyers and plaintiffs have said they are reluctant to seek them because judges are supplied with the names of the requesters before documents are released.
The judges' reports are available to the public only on paper and only after lengthy delays. In 2002, the average delay was 90 days. Requesters interviewed by the GAO "each expressed frustration at how long it took," the study said.
[Update 8/29/04.] The above GAO link is no longer good, but, thanks to How Appealing, here are two other links to the document, in PDF and html versions.
Posted by Marcia Oddi at August 6, 2004 07:33 AM