Bloomberg News Wins Access to Fed's Bailout Data

Posted by Terry Francke, General Counsel | Mar 19, 2010 | Legal Issue: Public Information | 1 |

PUBLIC INFORMATION — A federal appeals court has ordered the secretive Federal Reserve Board
to release records requested
by Bloomberg
News in 2008 under the Freedom of Information Act relating to the $2.14 trillion bank bailout, reports Barbara Hollingsworth for the Washington Examiner. Bloomberg
was seeking the names of firms that received TARP funds or assets that
were being used as collateral.

FOIA requires federal agencies to
hand over government documents on request. But the Fed refused, claiming
an exemption in the law protecting confidential financial data
permitted it to withhold the information because releasing it would
cause bailed-out lenders severe and irreparable competitive injury.

U.S.
Circuit Judge Dennis Jacobs, chief of the U.S. Court of Appeals in
Manhattan, found no basis for the Feds refusal to release the
requested documents in the FOIA law, agreeing with Bloomberg lawyers
that the public has a compelling right to know about the unprecedented
and highly controversial use of tax dollars.

About The Editor

Terry Francke, General Counsel

Terry Francke has a 39-year history of helping journalists, citizens and public officials understand and use their First Amendment and open government rights. With CalAware, Francke has authored comprehensive and authoritative guidebooks to California law on access to government meetings and public records and the news gathering and publication rights of journalists. Focusing on these issues in public forum law, he supervises CalAware's legislative and litigation initiatives; conducts workshops on legal compliance; helps design public records audits; supports local sunshine ordinance drafting efforts; writes CalAware Today, a blog on current developments and proposals in the law and best practices; and answers countless queries by phone and e-mail from citizens, journalists, public officials and employees, and lawyers. Francke previously served 14 years as executive director and general counsel to the California First Amendment Coalition, after a 10-year post as legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association. He has served as an advisory panel member to the National Center on Courts and the Media; taught journalism law at the Department of Communication at Stanford University; and served as an expert contributor to the 1994 major revisions to the Ralph M. Brown Act and the 2004 ballot proposition making open government a basic right of citizens under the California Constitution. Francke is a 1967 graduate of the University of Notre Dame and a 1979 graduate of McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific. Prior to his legal career, Francke worked as a weekly newspaper editor and in military and local government public affairs positions.

1 Comment

Nadine on March 20, 2010 at 9:39 am

This will make for some interesting reading. Expect it to be appealed.
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