Pierce County stops gouging citizens for public records
Posted by Jonathan Bechtle - March 19, 2009
Audits may take awhile to finish, but sometimes they can be pretty effective.
In October 2007 I had occasion to ask the Pierce County auditor for a copy of the county voter roll, and was more than a little surprised to get a bill for $75 along with the CD. King County charges only 3 bucks for its much larger voter roll.
"Michael H" suggested in a comment to my blog post about the problem that I should complain to the State Auditor, which I did. Today I received
an email from the auditor's staff with the resolution of my complaint. He explained that "the County claimed that
each query of the [voter roll] system constituted creation of a new record, a function not explicitly required in the [Public Records] Act. After extensive discussion with County officials...we determined
the voter roll meets all criteria of a public record."
Thank you, Brian Sonntag and your staff. And thank you, Pierce County, for recognizing that public records in a database are still public records.
At the time I noted that the CDs probably cost about $15 to make. Guess how much Pierce County is now charging for the voter roll?
Add Comment -
Douglas Ivar Kerley said on Feb 23 2009 at 11:52am
$111.50. I ran into this all the time with the feds. Kudos for getting on King TV's "UP Front". What's up with this "Mainstream Media" coverage? Who did you have to grease? What is their agenda? Keep up the good work. Doug
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