President Bush recently announced the reappointment of Martin Faga as a member of the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) and the appointment of Dr. Jennifer E. Sims to the PIDB for the remainder three-year terms expiring 10/03/11.
The end may finally be in sight to the seven-year battle historians and archivists have waged to overturn President Bush’s Executive Order 13233 of November 2001 that restricted access to presidential records. On January 7, 2009, the House of Representatives approved H.R. 35, the “Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2009,” by an overwhelmingly bi-partisan vote of 359-58. H.R. 35 was chosen by the House leadership as the first piece of substantive legislation passed in 2009 as a symbol of government transparency.
On January 7, 2009, the House of Representatives approved H.R. 36, the “Presidential Library Donation Reform Act of 2009,” by a vote of 388-31. H.R. 36 requires organizations fundraising for Presidential libraries to disclose their donations while the president is in office and during the period before the federal government has taken possession of the library.