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Clerk of the Circuit Court Jed Pittman decided last year not to help fund a Web site that would give free access to records.
By ALISA ULFERTS
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 20, 2000
Last week, Property Appraiser Mike Wells showed a roomful of people the tricks of his new Web site: how to find out if property is in a flood zone or who owns a particular tract of land or how to calculate their taxes for next year.
It is all available with the click of a mouse -- and it's free.
But then someone asked why ownership deeds aren't available on the Web site.
"I knew I should have kept my mouth shut," Wells grumbled the day after the session.
But he didn't, and instead opined to the group that not all public officials share his enthusiasm for putting public records online.
Not Clerk of the Circuit Court Jed Pittman, anyway, who declined to participate last year when Wells, Supervisor of Elections Kurt Browning and Tax Collector Mike Olson pooled their resources to put their records on the Internet.
"Jed (Pittman) told me he was concerned about the loss of revenue to his office and he didn't want to give us anything for our Web site," Wells said Wednesday, the day after the session. Instead, Pittman charges everyone -- including Wells and the County Commission -- $1 a page to copy the official records his office keeps. Certified copies cost $1 more.
Wells said his office paid the clerk's office $19,355 last year to get the records it needs, such as sales documents and deeds, to appraise property in the county. If Pittman would stop charging him for the records and simply transfer the documents electronically, Wells said, he would cut that amount out of his budget and return it to taxpayers.
"Every month I'm writing a check (to the Clerk's office)," Wells said.
"It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. We all get our money from the same pot."
Reached at his office last week, Pittman acknowledged that revenue plays a large role in his hesitancy to put his records online, which would allow people to make copies themselves for free.
"It's a loss we wouldn't be able to make up," Pittman said.
State law allows clerks to charge the public and other government agencies up to $1 per page.
Wells charges 15 cents a page for people who walk in his office and use his copy machine instead of getting copies online. And he says his revenue from those copies has dropped since launching his Web site. But, Wells added, the demand on his counter staff has dropped, and his staff's productivity has risen overall, as the Web site frees more people to do other tasks.
Browning said he, too, has noticed a decrease in foot traffic in his office since his Web site went up last year.
"Personally, I've seen a big drop in people coming in to look at candidates' files," Browning said. Though it's too early to tell whether he'll see a drop in copying revenue -- since most people request his copies of campaign finance reports later in the election season -- Browning said it will actually save his office money if more people make their own copies off the Web site.
Tax collector Olson said his site will be up later this spring. His programmers have been tied up with other matters in recent months, he said.
Although a major concern, revenue is not the sole source of Pittman's Internet anxiety. The clerk said he has some concerns about inadvertently releasing the home addresses of law enforcement officials and others exempt from Florida's public records law.
"We're trying to get clarification on that. If we released that, we could get sued."
Browning doesn't buy it.
"He only needs to keep it confidential if they request it," Browning said.
While government employers cannot release the names and addresses of certain employees, other agencies that have that information for other purposes must keep it confidential only if the person requests it, according to state law.
For example, the Sheriff's Office may not release the addresses of most of its employees. But if any of those employees donate to a political campaign, their addresses are released to the public via campaign finance reports unless they request that Browning keep them confidential.
"I'm the one who probably has to deal with that more than he does. I've got races for sheriff, and law enforcement officials donate to those campaigns," Browning said.
But the biggest reason Pittman gives for staying offline for now is that his office is finishing a massive project of its own -- building a case management system.
That project will consolidate the separate computer systems that track court records in categories like civil, criminal, traffic and probate. It's a much larger project than building a Web site and one Pittman said his office has been working on for quite a while.
Said Pittman: "We're pretty busy around here. We're not sitting around thinking, "Gee, should we put up a Web site today?' "