Senator wants accounting of groups reimbursed for suing government

Scrutiny of the Equal Access to Justice Act went bipartisan on Monday when Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., submitted a bill calling for a complete accounting of how much the fund pays people and groups that successfully sue the federal government. Last summer, House Republicans proposed their own EAJA overhaul, which would limit who can request reimbursements and also tracks the money paid out. Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., supported that measure. In an interview on Monday, Tester said EAJA has been blamed for funding environmentalist lawsuits without looking at the full picture of the fund's uses. "Especially with Social Security and the Veterans Administration, we just don't have a lot of facts out there about how the money is being utilized," Tester said. "We don't know how it's impacting agency budgets. I thought it would be a good idea to get more information before we take steps to reform it." The Equal Access to Justice Act became law in 1980 under President Jimmy Carter and was permanently funded in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan. Under a paperwork reduction reform by President Bill Clinton in 1995, annual accounting of EAJA spending lapsed and was never reinstated. The result was that each agency handled its own requests and paid them out of its individual budget. Some agencies keep close track of the spending. A single call to the U.S. Forest Service Region 1 headquarters in Missoula produced a report of $1,984,981 in EAJA payments between 2000 and 2010. But calls to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were referred to the U.S. Department of Justice, whose spokesman said he couldn't find an accounting. While many environmental groups have received EAJA payments after defeating government agencies in court, the fund has also been used by business owners to challenge Occupational Safety and Health Administration decisions, veterans seeking benefits from Veterans Affairs, and security firms suing the Citizenship and Immigration Services...more