After three decades, an annual cost to taxpayers of more than $80 million, and three attempts by Congress to improve it, the Freedom Of Information Act remains a wonderful ideal, but in practice it isn't all that useful to journalists. In fact, the FOIA is cumbersome, inefficient, and often unproductive, and the press has largely abandoned it.

The FOIA requires federal agencies to give copies of records to the public, including the press, when they're requested, unless the information sought falls within one of the act's nine exemptions. When passed in 1966, Congress and the press expected it to enable journalists to pry records from federal bureaucracies within ten to twenty working days. But it hasn't turned out to be that efficient. When it comes to the FOIA, an American Society of Newspaper Editors news release advised in July: Avoid it. "A requester would do better to talk to an agency's public affairs office," ASNE said, and get the records without filing a formal request.

 "It serves journalists less well than it has in the past, partly because of the delays," says Rebecca Daugherty of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "But where I think the FOIA act has derailed is over the interpretation of the privacy exemption." The act exempts from release personnel, medical, law enforcement, and other files that contain private information about individuals.

 In 1989, though, the U.S. Supreme Court considered a suit brought by the Reporters Committee. In the suit, a CBS reporter claimed the FBI illegally refused to release the arrest record of a Defense Department contractor whom CBS suspected of having ties to organized crime. The court, in a landmark ruling, agreed with the FBI, and said agencies can withhold records about individuals unless they shed light on how the agency is run. Unfortunately, Daugherty says, agencies broadly interpret that ruling to keep secret any records that mention private citizens. "If you can't find out any information about people who are affected by regulation or who are fined by the government or who are running the government or consulting with the government or who are jailed by the government," she argues, "then you don't really have any idea what the government is doing."

It's not unusual to have requests turned down under one of the act's exemptions, and if a reporter has waited three months to three years to get the response, being told "no" can be especially irritating. "Journalists tend to use the act rather infrequently," says Harry Hammitt, publisher of Access Reports, a biweekly FOIA newsletter published in Lynchburg, Virginia, "largely because the act doesn't work very efficiently for journalists."

 Hammitt estimates that journalists file only about 5 percent of the estimated 600,000 requests federal agencies receive every year. By far, the biggest users are private businesses seeking information on competitors or sales leads, lawyers looking for documents, and prisoners trying to discover who ratted on them. Among journalists, investigative reporters can best use FOIA, because they usually have the time to shepherd requests through bureaucracies. But even they tend to be reluctant FOIA users.

 It's hard to generalize about agency responses, according to Michael Ravnitzky, a law student and self-trained FOIA expert in St. Paul, Minnesota, who has filed 2,000 requests of his own and often advises reporters on how to make FOIA work for them. Smaller agencies, such as the Comptroller of the Currency, and even larger agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services, provide records efficiently within a few weeks, he says. Others have delays of several years, including the Department of Justice, which has about 750 employees processing approximately 135,000 annual FOIA and Privacy Act requests; the State Department; the Internal Revenue Service; and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Under 1996 amendments to the act, the FOIA gives agencies twenty days to respond to a request. If a reporter gets a response that soon, though, it's usually a letter saying the request is being processed. More typical are requests that are filled in months, if not years, after the story for which they were needed was published. "I battled the Department of Energy for five years for documents relating to the clean-up of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor," recalls David DeKok of the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Patriot-News. "You can't depend on the FOIA at all for stories with deadlines less than two months out." Agencies that have long delays typically get a lot of requests, many of them complicated, and their records are sensitive.

True enough, agency responses have improved during the past five years, Ravnitzky says. Moreover, the 1996 FOIA amendments, known as the Electronic Freedom of Information Act, require agencies to speed up responses if there is an "urgency to inform the public," and to release records in electronic form, including putting some records online and providing records on CD or computer disk, if asked.

 There are several strategies to get quicker and fuller agency responses:

* Before filing requests, talk with FOIA officers in the relevant agency to get advice. If they ask for clarification, provide a quick response. Ravnitzky points out that the IRS denies about 85 percent of all requests because requesters didn't respond to an inquiry asking for additional information or clarification.

* Make your request specific, if possible. Asking for everything an agency has on a subject will increase the response time.

* Ask for expedited responses. But you have to make good arguments, Ravnitzky says. Explain specifically why the information is important to the public and why it needs to be disseminated quickly.

 * Anticipate an agency's denial and argue up front against the exemptions likely to be invoked. Records dealing with private citizens are subject to the privacy exemption; and records of on-going criminal investigations, pertaining to national security, or containing a company's propriety information also are covered by exemptions. Arguing that releasing the records is in the public interest might avoid time-consuming appeals.

 * Always appeal rejections. A lawyer isn't necessary, but a well-argued defense is.

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