Some federal agencies are running more than 15 years late on fulfilling Freedom of Information Act requests, according to a post in The Hill newspaper. The report from Kevin Bogardus comes after the enactment of much-celebrated FOIA reforms earlier this year. Bogardus writes:

Several federal agencies are running more than 15 years late on public record requests sent under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) when the first President Bush was still in office.

The Energy Department has the tardiest public record request, according to a review by The Hill of annual FOIA reports published by Cabinet-level agencies for the last fiscal year. It still has not answered one request from Dec. 6, 1991, although other departments are not far behind.

The Defense Department has a request pending from May 5, 1992, while the Treasury Department has not answered a request from March 8, 1993.

“Typically, when I file a request for information, I want it this week or this month, not 15 years from now,” said Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists. He said the decade-old requests are inconsistent with a law that is intended to get information to the public as quickly as possible.

Read Kevin’s full posting here.