More Library Wrecking by Federal Agents

If you’ve ever worked in one of the cramped docket rooms of a federal agency, you know it can be a tiresome way to get insights into the intricacies of regulation. So the government’s plan to put documents online is a good, democratic thing.

But before you destroy the paper copies, it’s a good idea to make sure they’ve been scanned.

Apparently, the EPA forgot to do this. In 2003, in response to budget cuts, the EPA developed a plan for closing 26 regional libraries and putting the documents on line. But over the past two years, the agency has closed the libraries willy-nilly, boxing and sometimes throwing out documents without carefully cataloguing what was there, according to Brad Miller (D-NC), head of a house science and technology subcommittee. A GAO report says the EPA’s digitization plan is in limbo becasue EPA began shuttering docket rooms and boxing documents before it figured out which were necessary for public scrutiny of its actions. The EPA, GAO investigator John Stephenson said Friday, “hasn’t gone through the process of what makes sense to document or digitize.”

Incompetence, or evil intent? Hard to know, with this administration.