White House to Announce New Policy Disclosing Visitors to White House

[jefferson_dem]

White House to Announce New Policy Disclosing Visitors to White House
September 04, 2009 7:03 AM

President Obama will announce today that the White House will regularly make public the names of visitors to the White House.

“For the first time in history, records of White House visitors will be made available to the public on an ongoing basis,” President Obama will say in a statement “We will achieve our goal of making this administration the most open and transparent administration in history not only by opening the doors of the White House to more Americans, but by shining a light on the business conducted inside. Americans have a right to know whose voices are being heard in the policymaking process.”

Officials say that every month they will post on-line records of visitors from the previous 90-120 days.

There will be exceptions made for national security reasons or other meetings that White House considers "necessarily confidential....such as a visit by a possible Supreme Court nominee."

But otherwise, records of every visitor who comes to the White House for appointments, tours, or to conduct business will be released.

Kudos for the new policy came from Melanie Sloan, the executive director of the good government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which earlier this year filed a lawsuit to force disclosure of meetings from officials of the pharmaceutical and clean coal industries with the Obama administration.

“Today the Obama administration has proven its pledge to usher in a new era of government transparency was more than just a campaign promise," Sloan said. "The Obama administration will have the most open White House in history. Providing public access to visitor records is an important step in restoring transparency and accountability to our government.”

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http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/white-house-to-announce-new-policy-disclosing-visitors-to-white-house.html