State Dept. slow to hire open records staffers despite flood of requests

By Julian Hattem, The Hill, Sept. 21, 2016

The State Department has faced a deluge of open records requests and lawsuits in recent months, many of them stemming from former Secretary Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server throughout her tenure at the department.

But despite the demands, the department has been slow to hire new staffers, according to a court filing that was made as part of an open records lawsuit launched by the Republican National Committee (RNC).

This year, the State Department has been authorized to hire 25 new full-time staffers to work on processing requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

But only one has been hired, Obama administration lawyers disclosed in their filing this week. 

And only six other postings have been advertised on the government’s official jobs portal, suggesting that 18 of the openings have not even been made public.

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