Democracy functions best when the public has access to detailed information about what government officials do and why they do it. Beyond that, the Congress cannot perform its important oversight roles regarding the vast federal bureaucracies if it is denied thorough and timely responses to the requests by its committees and members for information.

That’s why the Freedom of Information Act, typically referred to for brevity as FOIA, was passed by Congress in 1967 and has subsequently been amended over the decades since.

Unfortunately, both Congress and the citizenry frequently have difficulty gaining from federal agencies the information they are entitled to by law. Bureaucrats often take far longer than the law permits to respond to FOIA inquiries — sometimes many months or even years. Information is sometimes denied by interpreting the exceptions to disclosure that the statutes permit more liberally than Congress intended. Portions of documents are all too often heavily redacted, supposedly for legitimate reasons, but actually because the full text would reveal disturbing failures or misdeeds. Statutory requirements that there be more extensive online access to the types of information most in demand by the public are being implemented unevenly across government — sometimes not at all or much more slowly than Congress anticipated.

That’s why Sen. Charles Grassley and three other senators — Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., John Cornyn. R-Texas, and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., all members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, are raising concerns about what they characterize as “a continued culture of secrecy in the federal bureaucracy.” The Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction over FOIA.

The Iowa Republican and this bipartisan group of colleagues jointly sent a letter on March 14 to Melanie Pustay, who is director of the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy. They want Pustay to explain how the Trump administration intends to bring its massive bureaucracies into better compliance with FOIA. Fourteen specific queries are posed to Pustay, each of which requires a detailed response. In summary, however, the point the senators are making is quite straightforward:

“Compliance with FOIA’s statutory requirements, including the 2016 amendments, is necessary to ensure that the public can fully exercise its right to know,” the letter says.

When government officials find it inconvenient to do business and keep and disclose records in an open manner, we all have good reason to be alarmed.Only people with questionable performance or motives have anything to fear from public scrutiny.

The Messenger strongly supports the goal of making FOIA processes more effective. It is unfortunate that more than a half century after this crucial law was passed getting bureaucrats to take it seriously remains a problem. We commend Grassley and his colleagues for moving forcefully to bring the federal agencies into better compliance with FOIA.