Documenting additional government data withholding

Public officials sometimes discuss the great sacrifices they make in serving the public, but too often, that sacrifice doesn’t involve sharing government information. And though they strain to explain why keeping information away from the public is good for them, it more often protects government employees from embarrassing or damaging disclosures.

Consider the state of Indiana. After journalists discovered significant problems with the results of drug tests the State Department of Toxicology conducts, state officials decided to re-test about 500 samples involving marijuana and cocaine.

How many were accurate? How many were inaccurate? Of the mistakes, how many were false positives and false negatives?

State officials are telling county prosecutors – and no one else, The Indianapolis Star reports.

This despite the recommendation from a toxicology advisory panel Gov. Mitch Daniels appointed that “The results of the retesting ... should be conveyed to the prosecutors, defense and public in understandable language.”

Meanwhile, at the federal level, the Department of Health and Human Services is preparing to publish a significant study into whether there is a connection between diesel engine exhaust and lung cancer in miners. The $11.5 million study by your federal government, though, remains locked away – because a mining industry group says its representatives should see it first. Incredibly, so do Republicans on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. And a federal judge went along, granting the right of pre-publication review.

In a court filing, the Mining Awareness Resource Group wrote the report is “likely to spawn public concerns, regulatory actions, and lawsuits, likely based on inaccurate and faulty Study reports.” Amazing, isn’t it, that the mining group can claim this without even reading the report?