From WNYKRC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield. And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week, Congress and the White House clashed over President Bush's proposed $3.1 trillion budget for 2009. Most of the anger was aimed at its call for tax cuts. But for us, Freedom of Information Wanks, there was something else

tucked into Bush's budget, the elimination of the new job of FOIA Ombudsman. When citizens

try to obtain government documents under the Freedom of Information Act, the Ombudsman was created

to consider their cases fairly when their requests were denied.

The position was written into the Bipartisan Open Government Act signed into law on New Year's

Eve when champagne corks were popped, but now it's all gone flat because Bush's budget

effectively killed the Ombudsman. Rebecca Carr is National Correspondent for Cox newspapers.

She says the ombudsman could have helped make the system more responsive to the public it's supposed to serve.

There's some freedom of information requests languishing in excess of 15 years.

That's far in excess of the 20-day time limit.

And this is the first time in 10 years that any legislation has passed Congress that addresses the major problems within the Freedom of

Information Act. Assuming it isn't defanged in the budget process, how does it affect the work of

journalists? I mean, if there really were, for instance, a 20-day

response deadline to FOIA requests, could that usher in a new era of aggressive watchdogging?

Well, that is certainly the hope of journalists in Washington and throughout the country, that

if the Freedom of Information Act actually works, you are going to see, you know, not just a spring of information, but a river.

FOIA has been ailing for a while. Why did Congress pass this act now?

What really was the impetus behind this was a Republican by the name of John Cornyn of Texas who rode to town saying he was going to be the open government master, and he worked hand in hand with Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to bring about this change. It wasn't easy. It took over five years to make what some consider very small changes, but in essence,

changes that would make the Freedom of Information Act more accessible to the average citizen

out there. So summarize some of these small changes that the Open Government Act would make

in the process. They were going to have a federal

tracking system for Freedom of Information Act requests. There were going to be penalties levied

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