We finally know who is keeping an open-government bill from seeing the light of day in the U.S. Senate.

Thanks to the Society of Professional Journalists and other open-government advocates, Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., came out and admitted that he placed a secret hold on the Open Government Act. Kyl was forced out of the shadows after SPJ and other groups asked senators on the record, one by one, whether he or she was the one blocking the bill from getting a floor vote.

A secret hold is a parliamentary procedure under the rules of the U.S. Senate that allows one or more members to prevent a floor vote without revealing the name or names of who is doing the blocking. In recent years, secret holds have been used with particular irony to block a number of bills having to do with disclosure of information -- federal funding accountability, campaign disclosure and now the Open Government Act.

Attempts have been made to abolish secret holds but the practice, outrageously, continues.

Kyl said he placed the hold on the bill because the U.S. Justice Department has "uncharacteristically strong" objections to the bill, and he won't lift the hold until those differences are hammered out. Few agree that the bill poses any problems. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, for example, voted in April with a unanimous Judiciary Committee to send the bill to the floor.

We shouldn't be surprised about Kyl, the man who attempted to create an American version of Britain's Official Secrets Act. In that case, Kyl tried to tack his measure onto an unrelated bill when nobody was looking. It would have allowed the government to prosecute anyone who releases any information on the government's anti-terrorism actions, which is so broad that it would hide a great deal of information the public ought to know about.

The current bill Kyl is blocking, the Open Government Act, is a bipartisan effort to reform the federal Freedom of Information Act. It would require government to provide timely responses to federal records requests and make government officials accountable for their actions if they hide public information.

Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, have addressed some of the Justice Department's objections with their bill. For example, they are willing to allowing prosecutors to deny access to privileged or law enforcement-sensitive information.

But those concessions were not enough for Kyl, who also objects to the government being forced to pay attorneys fees to records requesters when information is improperly withheld and FOIA lawsuits are settled. He argued that forcing the government to pay legal fees would make it less likely to change its mind on FOIA requests.

In truth, the prospect of having to pay legal fees is likely to force agencies to comply more quickly rather than looking for flimsy excuses to deny requests for information. Why should a private citizen have to pay the bill to pry out information that should have been public in the first placefi

Any politician or bureaucrat who has a problem understanding that they work for the people should consider getting a job in the private sector.

The proper way to address problems with a proposed bill is through public debate, not secret maneuvers. Kyl should stand up and publicly state his objections for the record and seek to address them through public debate.

And the Senate needs to do away with secret holds once and for all. The practice offends the fundamental principles of government of and by the people.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A5.