Press release, Sen. Patrick Leahy: “…As the first major reform to FOIA in more than a decade, the OPEN Government Act would help to reverse these troubling trends and help to begin to restore the public’s trust in their government. This bill [S. 849] also improves transparency in the Federal Government’s FOIA process by: Restoring meaningful deadlines for agency action under FOIA; Imposing real consequences on federal agencies for missing FOIA’s 20-day statutory deadline; Clarifying that FOIA applies to government records held by outside private contractors; Establishing a FOIA hotline service for all federal agencies; and Creating a FOIA Ombudsman to provide FOIA requestors and federal agencies with a meaningful alternative to costly litigation.”