Changes to Puerto Rico's Transparency Law Get Bad Press

Civil rights groups and journalists are strongly against recent revisions to Puerto Rico's Transparency Act. They say that the changes make it much harder for the people to get information about the government.

The strength of transparency rules depends on how eager those in power are to follow them. Right now, Puerto Rico's press corps is asking serious concerns about whether the island's government is secretly making it easier to keep the public in the dark. A group of journalists, civil rights lawyers, and freedom of information advocates have all come to the same uncomfortable conclusion after reading a set of recent changes to Puerto Rico's Transparency and Public Information Act: these changes make accountability harder, not easier. The changes make a number of procedural changes that, when looked at one by one, might seem technical and unimportant. Here, give people more time to respond; there, make an exemption category bigger; and there, add another review layer. But when you read them all together and in context, the image gets apparent. Journalists who often ask for public documents say that the changes make the process more difficult at every level. There are more hoops to jump through, more waiting, and more chances for agencies to delay, deflect, or deny without any real consequences. This doesn't look good for a government that has been under a lot of scrutiny for corruption in the past few years and is being watched by a federal financial oversight board. Civil liberties groups have been very clear about what they think: they say that the changes are an attempt to keep the public from seeing how the government works by hiding behind administrative reform. The press has responded in a very concerted way. A group of Puerto Rican journalists and news organizations put out a united statement decrying the changes and urging for them to be rolled back right now. Lawyers are looking into whether the changes may be challenged in court. Government officials have defended the revisions as a normal way to modernize an old law. Critics say this doesn't fit with the precise constraints that were put in place. These changes feel less like modernization and more like going back to the way things were in a place where public knowledge isn't free to flow.