The head of the Bureau of Land Management acknowledged in a recent letter to a conservation group that the agency has a problem responding to open records requests, but said officials are taking substantive steps to resolve the issue.
BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning, in a letter sent last week to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, wrote that the bureau this year has implemented a series of moves designed to whittle down a Freedom of Information Act backlog of nearly 1,600 requests.
But PEER Rocky Mountain Director Chandra Rosenthal wrote Wednesday in a blog post on the watchdog group’s website that the moves outlined in Stone-Manning’s letter are “equivalent to trying to reduce an iceberg one ice cube at a time.”
Stone-Manning’s letter, addressed to Rosenthal, was a response to complaints that PEER and four other conservation groups outlined in a letter they sent in Aprilto the BLM director and Attorney General Merrick Garland expressing frustration at the backlog of open records requests.
