President-elect Donald Trump said this week he will replace the archivist of the United States, Colleen Shogan. That's not only a bad omen for the protection of presidential records but also for efforts to limit government secrecy.

Trump made the comment during an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt. Hewitt suggested that all of Trump’s “problems” in his classified documents case started because the archivist at the time, David Ferriero, “hated” Trump.

Hewitt noted that Shogan was not the archivist who referred the case to the Justice Department, but asked Trump, “Are you going to replace this Archivist and get someone who actually protects the legacy of the United States and doesn’t persecute political appointments?”

Trump said yes.

Threatening to fire the current archivist over the National Archives and Records Administration’s work to recover the records Trump wrongly took to Mar-a-Lago raises genuine concerns about retaliation and future compliance with the Presidential Records Act.

But the threat could have a silver lining if it prompts Shogan to spend her remaining time being candid with the public about what NARA needs to survive. This will help supporters more effectively advocate for NARA during the next Congress.

Successive archivists — appointed by both Republicans and Democrats — have failed to secure adequate funding for the agency. An audit I conducted while working for the National Security Archive shows that NARA’s budget has remained stagnant in real dollars for over 30 years.

This systemic underfunding makes it easier for the government to keep too many secrets in two important ways.

First, it makes it easier for the government to overclassify information. NARA’s Information Security Oversight Office, which oversees government-wide compliance with the security classification program, doesn't have the resources or the authority to force agencies to accurately report how many classified records they have, or how much it costs to keep these secrets. This makes it easier for agencies to continue overclassifying records without consequences.

Second, it keeps declassification offices from getting the resources they need. At its current funding level, it would take NARA over 600 years to fulfill pending declassification requests at just two of its 15 presidential libraries. If you file a single FOIA request at the George W. Bush Presidential Library, you can expect to wait 12 years for a response. And the National Declassification Center, which was established to streamline the declassification of older agency records, doesn’t have the authority to overrule agencies like the CIA and FBI when they want to keep their records secret.

These are deeply entrenched problems that NARA and its advocates have struggled to fix. A large part of the problem has been NARA leadership’s unwillingness to portray the agency — and the important work that it does — in a negative light.

No leader wants to admit that their agency isn’t meeting its mission. But at a certain point, attempts to preserve an agency’s reputation do more harm than good.

And if advocates don’t have more detailed information about what resources and authorities NARA needs, they can’t lobby as effectively for the agency. This in turn could make it easier for Trump to redirect NARA’s limited resources to serve his own interests rather than the greater good.

If Shogan is indeed on her way out, she could still do something none of her predecessors did:

Tell the public exactly what resources the agency needs to 1) effectively fight overclassification, and 2) declassify the government’s most important records.