Why is the National Newspaper Association interested in the farm bill?

Since, 2010, South Dakota’s Argus Leader has been waging a battle against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and, later, the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) for access to this information. The newspaper has won in multiple court battles, but the case has yet to resolve itself. Most recently, FMI, a trade association that represents retailers and wholesalers, began defending the case after USDA declined to take it any further, and in August appealed to the Supreme Court to intervene.

Each side’s argument is pretty simple: The Argus Leader has argued that a store’s income from SNAP should be public information under the guiding principle that all government spending should be shared with the public, unless it compromises someone’s safety or ability to compete in business. The USDA, and later FMI, have argued that sharing SNAP sales data would cause competitive harm to the retailers involved. I wrote about it all in more detail last month.

At this point, if the Supreme Court declines to intervene, the Argus Leader will gain access to the data it’s been asking for. (With potentially significant caveats—a separate, related lawsuit has commenced in Texas, and a judge there has placed a stay on the release of retailer SNAP data until it’s resolved. The grocery industry could pursue state-by-state decisions in this way as a kind of public information whack-a-mole.)

The recent twist—the thing that’s got the National Newspaper Association involved—is that Congress might intervene and protect the retailers’ data regardless of what happens with the judicial process. There are provisions in both the Agriculture Appropriations Bill and one version of the farm bill that would keep retailer sales data hidden.

“Retailers may have other reasons for wishing to shield the data, but such concerns should not override the public interest in scrutiny of such an important taxpayer-funded program,” writes Susan Rowell, president of the association. Rowell goes on to criticize what she calls the “piecemeal erosion” of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) each year from “individual interests hoping to gain their own particular shelters for records.”

This story is far from over. The conference committee has not released its final version of the farm bill, nor has the appropriations bill crossed the finish line. Even if they both decline to include the language in the pending legislation, the Supreme Court could rule against the Leader.

And then we’d never know who makes the most off the $70-billion food stamps program.