White House reverses its ban on access to visitor logs

Open government groups hailed Friday's reversal of a White House policy barring access to visitor logs, but some criticized the 90 to 120 day delay in making the information available online to the public.

The decision stems from lawsuits filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington seeking the records of visits by Christian conservative leaders and lobbyist Stephen Payne, who allegedly sold access to top government officials, during the Bush administration, as well as from the denial of CREW's Freedom of Information Act requests for the list of industry executives who recently visited the Obama White House.

Public interest groups have been particularly interested in documenting the recent comings and goings of health care and energy industry lobbyists to gauge their influence on pending policy proposals.

Officials at the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington watchdog group, said the delay in posting the logs gives them pause. "Real time, online is the standard to which we should hold all government information," Sunlight Foundation Executive Director Ellen Miller wrote on the organization's blog. "That's what 'public' information means in the 21st century,"

Officials at accountability group OMB Watch said the wait period prevents the public from knowing who is lobbying the administration while potential influence peddling is happening.

The White House policy calls for releasing records on a monthly basis after 90 to 120 days. The first batch of logs -- for September -- would be released toward the end of the year. The administration plans to redact information that could compromise privacy or security, including phone numbers, names of family guests and visits by potential nominees.

"I would also bet it would be pretty darn easy to design a system that could provide that information on a daily basis," Miller wrote. "Hopefully, the White House will look into technological fixes for what they now assume will be a manual review and cleansing of the records."

Still, she called the decision "a historic step" that represents "a fundamental commitment by this president to the campaign pledges he made toward openness of government."

Norm Eisen, who co-founded CREW and is now special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, made the announcement on the White House blog. Eisen was a major force behind the White House's decision, CREW officials said. But he was not involved in the organization's protests before taking office.

"We are OK with the delay. It will take time for the visitor records to be collected and reviewed," CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan said. "We want to ensure that no personal information, such as Social Security numbers or birthdates, are revealed and that no information that would endanger national security is revealed."

The White House agreed on Thursday to provide CREW with the lobbyist records the group previously requested, and CREW dismissed the lawsuits.

The Bush administration had denied access to records of White House visits on the grounds that they are presidential records and thus exempt from FOIA.

Obama said in a statement, "We will achieve our goal of making this administration the most open and transparent administration in history not only by opening the doors of the White House to more Americans, but by shining a light on the business conducted inside. Americans have a right to know whose voices are being heard in the policymaking process."