Archive for the ‘New Jersey’ Category

The Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania is formulating new policies regarding public access to court case files. The Notice from the court highlights the proposed removal of Social Security numbers and bank account numbers from future court files. The public can submit comments by email, which are due by May 28, 2008.

The New Jersey Supreme Court Committee on Public Access to Court Records recently solicited comments on its proposed policy changes. Read the submitted comments and the report on policy changes.

An Opinion issued by the North Dakota Attorney General confirms that email messages from government employees “acting within the scope of their public positions” are public records “regardless of whether it is located at their private homes or businesses.”

Last year, I wrote about a similar determination by the Idaho Supreme Court and the Arkansas Supreme Court. The courts, not the government entity, must determine whether public employees’ emails are private, according to the Arizona Supreme Court.

Read a recent round-up of other state court decisions: Are public employee e-mails secret?, The Des Moines Register, March 18, 2008.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press tracks public records news. Subscribe by email or RSS.

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.

The online versions of mainstream newspapers continue to distinguish themselves by collecting public records, then making them searchable in a database. I mentioned two sites in a posting last week – DataUniverse (New Jersey) and DataCentral (Iowa). The Boston Herald is doing its part to sunshine the workings of the Massachusetts state government in a database identified as the 2007 State Employee Payroll. This database is unique in collecting public records from the government and making them easily accessible to the public, in a form not otherwise available. Search by partial last name or agency, or combine the two. A search identifies the department, the employee’s name, the job description, weekly hours and annual rate of pay. [Via Media Nation]

The Tennessee Leaf-Chronicle isn’t giving us a unique database but it is linking to some of the public records online databases at the government Web sites.

The Honolulu Advertiser’s Boating Safety Searchable Database is drawn from Coast Guard accident reports. Not all states are included and the site has few details on the extent of the data and the compiling process. Some document images of accident reports are here. The newspaper also has links to selective public records databases hosted at government sites.

Search high school graduates, government salaried employees and high school athletes for selective counties and municipalities in Kentucky and Indiana, at the Courier-Journal DataCenter. Plot property transfers in Jefferson County, Kentucky on a map. Search by street or zip code and sort by date, address or sales price.

Death Notices, building permits and smoking complaints are among the databases collected at this Cincinnati, Ohio paper.

Search Indiana state employee salaries by name and the Indiana Attorney General consumer litigation by company name. Indiana State Police speeding violations are searchable by name or location for the past 6 months.

The Des Moines Register has a variety of types of personal information databases that it has assembled from Iowa state government records. Court fines and business executive salaries are available statewide. Vital records indexes, property transfers, high school graduates and bankruptcies for Polk County can be searched by partial name. Records are indexed for 2007 only.

Check your area Gannett newspaper for their public records databases and public records directories.
[Thanks to Mark Schaver at Depth Reporting for many of these links.]

The New Jersey online inmate status service on the VINELink database has expanded from covering just county level facilities to Department of Corrections and the State Parole Board. A search at VINELink returns current and former inmates, the controlling agency or facility, the offender’s custody status -whether in or out of custody or under unsupervised custody- and if the offender is out of custody because of a court order, sentence was served, he’s paroled, living at a half-way house or released to his own recognizance. Surprisingly, if the offender’s status has changed due to escape, this is also noted. The inmate number, date of birth, gender, race and alias are listed. Telephone notification is an additional feature.

The New Jersey VINE gathers offender information from New Jersey’s County Jails, the New Jersey Department of Correction, New Jersey Juvenile Justice Commission and the New Jersey Parole Board, according to the New Jersey attorney General.

It doesn’t do researchers much good when we discover that personal information databases are taken off the Internet, as recently occurred with the Colorado Marriage and Divorce Index, reported at LegalDockets Online. Especially if there aren’t good alternatives. The Colorado State Archive has a limited statewide marriage and divorce index at the Archives, only through 1939.

The Jefferson County, Colorado Sheriff Crime Mapping database retrieves crime incidents over the past year for the unincorporated areas. Search by parcel number or address.

You never know when a marginal public records database, such as Virginia Freshwater Fish Citations, may break a case, right? Search by name and find where the guy was and the date of the catch.

The statewide New Jersey Property Owner Search at the Asbury Park Press has been updated.

Caddo Parrish, Louisiana Prisoners In Jail database, with case information and booking photos, is online. View in IE.

This isn’t a free divorce index, but for those who are subscribers to VitalSearch you can now search the Nevada Divorce Index, covering 1967-2005.

The New Jersey Courier-Post has added statewide New Jersey Superior Court Criminal Conviction Records to its collection of public records databases, called DataUniverse. The collection of DataUniverse databases include some private investigators frequently use: New Jersey Death Index, Department of Corrections inmates, real property ownership, state employees and disciplinary records of doctors. As always, check the source material, don’t assume these records are inclusive or accurate.

Media organizations have charged ahead developing databases of public records, often of indexes and documents the government has not released or developed. The Florida Herald Tribune Teacher Misconduct Database is built from court records and administrative complaints filed with the Education Practices Commission against teachers for various types of misconduct. Searchable by name or location, the site returns a summary of the matter and copies of documents. The data covers 1997 – 2005. The state is scrambling to develop its own online database, a good outcome of the Herald Tribune project. The Florida government site may be available sometime in 2007.

Reported in Lucas Grindley.