The Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog reports that Maryland has erected new obstacles to getting police reports.

Meanwhile, a newly introduced bill in the Wisconsin legislature would create a violent offender registry.

The Michigan Association of Secondary School Principals (not a staple news source) reports that the “Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that the home addresses and telephone numbers of public employees were subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), even when public employees requested that this information be kept confidential.”

The Kentucky Courts have implemented a case tracking system in 17 counties in concert with VINELink. Search a case by name in the Kentucky Courts index and select the VINELink icon to view the next court date, listed at the VINELink site. You can then register to receive telephone or email notification when the defendant’s court event status changes.

The VINE Court feature expands the detention status tracking, the primary site feature, to include those offenders who are not incarcerated but whose cases are still active. Also, you can perform a partial, last name only search at the Kentucky Court site, whereas the same search at VINELink requires a full last name and partial first name. Anyway, you can search for a non-custody defendant’s court status only from the Kentucky Court site. If you try to do the search from the VINELink site you’ll get, “No offenders matching your criteria were found!”.

The California Franchise Tax Board list of delinquent taxpayers (or should-be taxpayers) extends back to 1987.

“California Revenue & Taxation Code Section 19195 directs the Franchise Tax Board to publish an annual list of the top 250 taxpayers with liened state income tax delinquencies greater than $100,000.”

Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Mexico and New Jersey are among the states that are currently listing delinquent taxpayers, although some of these are just the top 100 taxpayers who owe the most.

Select a state Department of Revenue to locate other delinquent taxpayers lists.

Of all the harebrained ideas, the restriction of Wisconsin court records online is sure to be defeated in the legislative committee. The bill’s author claimed that Assembly Bill 418 would alleviate employment discrimination against people with criminal records. Keep an eye open for a revised bill that would limit access to those who can pay.

And even when state legislatures extend public records access - as the Ohio legislature did in the last General Assembly - confusion can lead to closure of records formerly open to the public. The Ohio court clerks are awaiting training on the Public Records Act, as the law requires, before returning access to court records.

A New Mexico judge agreed with a private investigator who brought suit against the state that the records of previous tax sales is a public record. Eric Griego had sought the Department of Taxation and Revenue records listing sales of property seized and sold by the state. The difference between the money made on the sale and the amount owed for taxes is supposed to be returned to the beneficiaries, who Griego located in his work as an heir hunter, but the agency had started denying his requests after complying for many years.