[11282] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Re: OPEN COURT RECORDS? -- compared to backward California
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (PACS-L Moderator)
Wed May 7 20:40:27 1997
Date: Wed, 07 May 1997 18:25:49 -0500
From: PACS-L Moderator <libpacs@UH.EDU>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
From: Jim Warren <jwarren@well.com>
Subject: Re: OPEN COURT RECORDS? -- compared to backward Californica <sic>
>On Tue, 6 May 1997, Jack Kennedy Jr wrote:
>
>> Dear Listserv members, *********** http://www.courtbar.org
>>
>> ... The Circuit Court for Wise County and the City of
>> Norton, Virginia, USA has been on-line with a web site for one year this
>> past May 1st. ..
Bravo!
In comparision -- in the supposedly high-tech state of California:
Los Angeles County courts want to peddle online access to public court
records for high profits (they like to call it "revenue") -- estimated by
them to earn, "approximately $1.2 to $1.8 million per year," even though,
"The county's actual cost for producing the [database] has been determined
to be $21,683." (Quotes are from the Sep.14, 1995, report by LA County's
Information Systems Advisory Board to the County Board of Supervisors,
seeking permission to thus assure unequal modern access to the courts ...
modern "justice" limited only to those who can buy it).
And, after much of a decade of bucks-coveting and hand-wringing, at least a
nominal majority of the Calif Judicial Council has finally, very
tentatively, suggested that maybe, perhaps, possibly the state's courts
ought to offer modern access to their already-computerized public records
to everyone on an *equal* basis, for no more than the incremental cost of
providing the access or copies.
When I mentioned this to Sen. Quentin Kopp's Teri Burns, who is
coordinating the bureaucat-dominated Senate Select Committee on Information
Services in State Government -- where I've been among the small minority
advocating such *equal* access to already-computerized public records --
she *instantly* responded that, well, that was just a proposal by the
Judicial Council, and that it had a long way to go before it could get
legislative approval.
(Can you guess the bias that Senator Kopp's representative has seemed to
diligently support while chairing the Select [advisory] Committee? Right!
-- suck up to the bucks-hustling bureaucrats and peddle the data for [at
least!] "full-cost recovery" ... that can include depreciation on
computers, staff retirement benefits and even building depreciation! This
will *trash* the long-standing California Public Records Act principle of
limiting fees for public records to incremental cost of copying [or
statutory fee].)
The long cc-list is explicitly included so you can express your views on
the Committee's bias to those who happen to be online (many of them are
not).
--jim-in-the-minority (the *equitable* *public*-access minority)
Jim Warren (jwarren@well.com)
GovAccess list-owner/editor, advocate & columnist (MicroTimes)
345 Swett Rd., Woodside CA 94062; voice/415-851-7075; fax-for-the-quaint/<ask>
