Across the federal government, years of staffing cuts are finally catching up with the basic work of answering the public's questions. Agencies are telling judges they simply do not have enough people to keep up with Freedom of Information Act requests, and the fallout is landing squarely on journalists, researchers and residents who rely on those records for local reporting and oversight.
According to The Boston Globe, government lawyers for at least 13 agencies have blamed workforce reductions in 26 separate FOIA lawsuits for missing deadlines to turn over documents. That tally, the Globe reports, tracks with a Washington Post review of 339 active FOIA cases. The delays have touched requests involving everything from prison deaths and campus speech to public health analyses.
Internal watchdog records offer a closer look at what that means inside agencies. In documents released in a lawsuit brought by the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an April 3, 2025 email from HHS deputy chief FOIA officer William Holzerland warns that, "We're operating a skeleton crew," and predicts "widespread, significant service delays" across HHS FOIA programs. Those filings also show that some CDC requests were kicked over to HHS and that one reporter's request sat unnoticed until litigation forced the agency to finally deal with it.
Backlogs And A GAO Warning
The staffing crunch did not come out of nowhere. A 2024 Government Accountability Office report found that agencies frequently cite thin staffing and complex records requests as the main culprits behind growing FOIA backlogs. GAO urged clearer guidance, better data and stronger plans for trimming those backlogs. It also recommended that the Justice Department's Office of Information Policy push agencies to factor staffing levels and training into the timelines they promise requesters and federal judges.
Examples From Agencies And The Courts
Agency reports and court filings show how the numbers translate into delays. The Education Department's most recent FOIA report documented a loss of about 59 FOIA staffers, roughly a 53 percent drop. Court papers say the Bureau of Prisons has lost multiple FOIA attorneys and that the DEA's FOIA unit has been stretched by vacancies, slowing production of records during litigation.
In cases highlighted by The Boston Globe, HHS acknowledged that it "did not become aware" of a reporter's FOIA request until he sued, more than three months after he filed it. Judges in Washington, D.C., have made equally clear that short staffing is not a blank check for agencies to blow court-ordered deadlines, and they have been willing to press for answers when production schedules slip.
Legal Consequences And Oversight
Once FOIA disputes end up in federal court, judges typically impose production schedules that require agencies to justify any lag in turning over records. When missed deadlines pile up, courts can respond with sanctions and tighter oversight. The GAO report urged measurable plans for chipping away at backlogs and more aggressive review by the Office of Information Policy so that agencies do not lean on personnel shortages as a routine excuse for slow disclosure.
Why This Matters For Local Reporting
Those delays in Washington do not stay in Washington. Local reporters, public interest lawyers and community groups routinely depend on federal records for stories about prison conditions, vaccine and disease risk, education funding and agency contracts. When FOIA responses slow down, the result is fewer documents in the public record and longer waits to scrutinize how officials are spending money and exercising power close to home.
What To Watch Next
Congress is already poking at the problem. At an April 8, 2025 Senate Judiciary hearing, Sen. Dick Durbin warned that cutting staff makes transparency harder and called for bipartisan attention to FOIA enforcement and resources. For now, watchdog lawsuits, agency FOIA reports and GAO recommendations remain the clearest signs of whether federal transparency can ride out the staffing cuts or if Congress or the Justice Department will need to step in with a policy fix.
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