One of our local counties has just started a subscription service to view the tax records and gis info. It isn't much money - $20 per month or $180 per year. Is this going on around you? It may be the way everything is headed but it just seems like double dipping to me. Tax payers pay for the assessment, then pay to have the info compiled, pay to build the website and the gis and now we have to pay to access the info. Again, it is not that big of a deal (I would spend more in gas to drive to the courthouse to get the info if the internet was not available) just wondering if it is like this everywhere now.
No not here, still free. I think it is outrageous. What are ya going to do though?
yes david in ohio most are still free, but have you noticed some counties have taken their deeds ect. off line so they can charge when you come in.
> Again, it is not that big of a deal
YES it is a BIG DEAL.
F~ing B~turds will get me started to cussing.
God Bless America. (Seriously, please God).
I haven't noticed that yet. The counties we primarily do boundary work in (Lawrence, OH and Cabell, WV) both have assessor (GIS) available online for free. Lawrence also has deeds available online for free; Cabell does not. These tools are made available by taxpayer monies, the taxpayer should not be charged again to use the information.
> One of our local counties has just started a subscription service to view the tax records and gis info. It isn't much money - $20 per month or $180 per year. Is this going on around you? It may be the way everything is headed but it just seems like double dipping to me. Tax payers pay for the assessment, then pay to have the info compiled, pay to build the website and the gis and now we have to pay to access the info. Again, it is not that big of a deal (I would spend more in gas to drive to the courthouse to get the info if the internet was not available) just wondering if it is like this everywhere now.
Yes, I have heard of this. There were certain counties here in Maine that would charge to view data until just last year (2011) when the legislature's hand was forced by the Macimage ruling.
Now as far as I know it is free to view any deed in the state, but there is a standard charge to print which was established by the legislature.
Here in Maryland, it is still free to view many, if not all public records(but for how much longer?). I attempted to look up a friends' deed in Delaware and they charge, at least in his county. I think the county in NJ where my brother lives is still free to look for deeds and plats, but the records seem to be spotty.
We have a private service here that you can get about half the counties in the state for the same $20.
Bartow County, GA just started charging for this service. I don't know if that is what you are referring to or not. But I went to pull some deeds and names off of the GIS site and the charge box came up. Never had seen that before. Pretty crappy!!
> Bartow County, GA just started charging for this service. I don't know if that is what you are referring to or not. But I went to pull some deeds and names off of the GIS site and the charge box came up. Never had seen that before. Pretty crappy!!
Yep - Bartow is the one I was talking about.
More info here:
http://gaassessors.com/loadpage.php?refurl=http://www.qpublic.net/ga/bartow
Public information should be free for the public! You should definitely fight it tooth and nail. We have open records laws in place in NC, however any government agency that wants to can exempt themselves from the law by political maneuvering. It amounts to no more than reading the passage of "We are emempt" at a midnight hearing and if no objection is made (none ever are) it becomes law. Many of the local GIS departments have declared themselves exempt and charge fees for this data, which the taxpayers have already paid for!
Here in Tax-a-Chusetts we have several counties with several difference scenarios. Some counties are free to view & free to print (but there is a receipt that gives a 0.0 balance due…this could easily have a number inserted in the future)
.
Then there are counties that charge to print and require a credit card.
The WORST is my own county. You have to pay $100.00 per year to belong to the club that then gets charged 0.50 per print. The general public can’t print a copy of their deed without joining the club, or visiting the Registry in person. This was the way for several years, now they have changed to free printing. Not sure if they will still require the 100.00 fee.
The registries revenue is supposed to be through the “stamp” fees charged for recording documents. Fees for copies were charged because they had to pay for the copier, paper and the employee to make the copies. They claim that the copy fees offset the expense of scanning all the documents, but I say that’s just a modernization of the archive function of the Registry and thus covered under their stamp fees.
Since there are no additional costs to print from a computer file there should be no additional costs either. (rant off)
In the counties I work in in New York, they have a pay service to access the filed deed and map information on line through their system and then charge for documents downloaded and printed in my office. Ten cents a page. Guess it is their way of recovering the cost of setting up the system. You can get the recording information and tax information for free from that service but you can not view the deeds or filed maps, or other filed information on line.
Still cheaper than me sending someone to the County Clerk's Office to look them up,and have copies made at their office. Saves on gas, travel time..etc.
> Public information should be free for the public! You should definitely fight it tooth and nail. We have open records laws in place in NC, however any government agency that wants to can exempt themselves from the law by political maneuvering. It amounts to no more than reading the passage of "We are emempt" at a midnight hearing and if no objection is made (none ever are) it becomes law. Many of the local GIS departments have declared themselves exempt and charge fees for this data, which the taxpayers have already paid for!
Think back to what has happened to records in general in the last 20-30 years. Records are now stored electronically, whereas in the past they were stored in physical file drawers.
So in the past, the fee to store a document was a one time filing fee, with the step necessary to preserve the records being to open and close a file drawer.
Now, counties are being asked to store records electronically. Larger counties will have terabytes of storage needs, and the necessity to provide that data to the public, 24 hours a day. So that means a data center, which includes racks of hard drives, web, exchange, and internal servers, a robust firewall, a dedicated (probably fiber-optic) link to the outside world, and at the very least a part time IT professioanl to oversee the whole thing. Data centers are highly expensive to run, which is probably why you're seeing these new charges.
Peach County, GA has been charging for several years now. $100 / year
> Data centers are highly expensive to run, which is probably why you're seeing these new charges.
Well said Newton.
Most counties out here have created some sort of GIS system for their records. We can get all of the Tax maps free of charge and usually most deeds free through a title company. Various counties still charge for copies of the records and many of them don't reveal the owners names online.
Its funny, when the government wants to buy a new toy they always say, "oh it will save us money and let us do our work more efficiently." After they get the new toy, they always tell us it is extremely costly to run and that they have to raise taxes to keep up.
A work around is for a group of surveyors (perhaps the local chapter in your state society) to form their own "club", so everybody has the same login. Or hook up with a title company, realtor, or some other group who utilizes the same data base.
But I don't think a small fee to the recorders office or even the GIS is out of line, as long as they stay up to date. Our recorders charges $50/yr, but all the GIS data is free to the public, and it is an excellent site.
> A work around is for a group of surveyors (perhaps the local chapter in your state society) to form their own "club", so everybody has the same login. Or hook up with a title company, realtor, or some other group who utilizes the same data base.
>
> But I don't think a small fee to the recorders office or even the GIS is out of line, as long as they stay up to date. Our recorders charges $50/yr, but all the GIS data is free to the public, and it is an excellent site.
sneaky sneaky.
i like it.
if anyone has info they would like to share please email me and we can discuss.
a local county charges $500/yr for a disc with their gis data on it.