From problem to bill

1. The problem, with its root causes broken out

A problem record is not one grievance; it is a list of separable harms. Take records being withheld from the public. The root causes are not "they will not release it" — they are:

• no statutory duty to produce by a date,
• an exemption broad enough to cover anything,
• classification applied to conclusions rather than to sources,
• no penalty when an agency simply does not answer,
• nobody outside the agency able to check the agency,

and so on. Seven separate causes, in that example. Each one gets an id.

2. Language written against each cause

Drafting starts from the causes, not from the grievance. That is what stops a fix bill from being a press release: every section exists to close a numbered cause, and a section that closes nothing gets cut.

3. Why one problem often needs several bills

Different institutions refuse differently. Law enforcement refuses with a statutory exemption. The intelligence community refuses with a classification marking and the phrase sources and methods. Those are different legal machines that fail in different ways, and a single statute drafted against both would have to be vague about each.

So the movement writes packages: several bills, each of which stands alone and is enforceable on its own, and which only close the whole argument when read together. Each bill carries the list of its companions.

4. Publication, and then critique

A finished draft is published with its coverage, its gaps, its sources, and a standing invitation to tell us it is wrong. Feedback on a specific section is a first-class contribution.