WV Assessor Sues to Keep Tax Maps Off the Internet

An anonymous reader writes "After trying to charge $167,488 for their collection of county tax maps (in TIF format), West Virginia was forced by a judge to hand them over for a $20 'reproduction costs' fee. Now a county tax assessor has filed a lawsuit trying to block the tax maps from being put online, claiming copyright infringement and financial damages since fewer people are coming to her to buy paper copies at $8 per page."

Re:Public Record?

[barzok]

That's exactly what I thought.

A quick Google search confirmed that many municipalities do consider them public record (whether they are or not); Sacramento, CA's site is very helpful (I picked one at random), but also protects identifying data like parcel ownership.

Freedom of Information

[$random_var]

29B-1-3. Inspection and copying.
(1) Every person has a right to inspect or copy any public record of a public body in this state, except as otherwise expressly provided by section four of this article. ..
(3) The custodian of any public records, unless otherwise expressly provided by statute, shall furnish proper and reasonable opportunities for inspection and examination of the records in his or her office and reasonable facilities for making memoranda or abstracts therefrom, during the usual business hours, to all persons having occasion to make examination of them. The custodian of the records may make reasonable rules and regulations necessary for the protection of the records and to prevent interference with the regular discharge of his or her duties. If the records requested exist in magnetic, electronic or computer form, the custodian of the records shall make such copies available on magnetic or electronic media, if so requested.

http://www.legis.state.wv.us/WVCODE/29B/masterfrmFrm.htm [state.wv.us]

I don't believe the assessor can reasonably claim financial damage... generally copying fees are limited to nominal processing costs, or a close approximation thereof, and only in a few cases around the country have I ever heard of a government treating copying fees as a profit center... and those were only for specialized documents such as police reports being furnished to an insurance company.

This is such a backwards way of thinking. I work for a software company that is involved in document management, and everywhere we look, cities, counties, and states are looking to pass the savings on to their citizens, not trying to nickel and dime their way into mediocrity. The tax assessor's office's budget can always be fixed if they truly are relying on those $20 fees. Even those organizations that do make some money off supplying documents are constantly trying to improve access and let people access documents online and so on.

Re:Public Record?

[fyrewulff]

Interestingly, Omaha does this aswell:

http://www.dcassessor.org/ [dcassessor.org]

However, they do display parcel ownership. In fact, by name is one of the search options..

Local Gov Perspective

[KayElle]

I'm the IT critter for a town in Mass and I manage the online stuff, including mapping. It's possible that the sales of copies are built into the decision about whether or not to update maps, do additional flyovers, and that sort of thing. I don't know about taxes in WV, but here in Mass local government is very very lean, and I can easily see someone in a similar fiscal dilemma deciding that the best way to pay for more frequent updating of mapping (which with flyovers and such is fairly pricey for a small town or county) is by generating revenue from the maps. Particularly as most of the users of mapping are businesses--this doesn't apply quite as much to tax maps, but our GIS layers are pretty expensive to produce and when 90% of your requests for GIS maps are from business who would otherwise need to do the survey work themselves, it's a fine line between public access and corporate welfare.

Also, having possibly out of date maps available in a central archive does kind of worry me. I'd rather have people getting them from us directly. Citizens have a habit of getting the wrong end of a stick on something and storming into town hall irate out of their minds over problems that don't really exist. I've had irate people in my office banging on the counter and screaming waving printouts of some web site somewhere they found that they thought was our official one. Part of managing a municipal website is trying to figure out ways in which information can be presented where citizens will not be confused and assume the worst and where it will be kept accurate and fresh.

Having said that, I agree with most of the people here. These are public records. All our GIS layers are on our website in addition to the ones that are on MassGIS, which includes a viewer. We're adding PDF'd tax maps as of our next update. Our property record cards are available online. I think and our town thinks these are records that should made as widely available as possible. But IMHO that's not the only legitimate way to look at things.

You cannot copyright an idea

[omnirealm]

As has been pointed out many times before on Slashdot, copyright can only protect creative expressions, not ideas. To the extent that a copyright of a particular expression would be tantamount to copyrighting the idea, then one cannot legitimately claim copyright over the expression. If the expression is primarily functional in nature and if the only reasonable alternative representations of the idea are preposterous trivial modifications (e.g., change the colors of the map, make the lines dotted rather than solid, etc.), then that is a strong indication that the expression is substantially equivalent to the idea itself and is not candidate for copyright protection under U.S. law.

(Disclaimer: IANAL, but I did take a graduate law course on IP about a year ago. This post is not intended to be legal advice. Consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction for legal advice before you take any actions based on the conjectures contained in this post. Have a nice day.)

Re:The lady is a hero.

[Anonymous Coward]

The 8 dollars per copy goes to the tax assessor not the county or the state.

She is filing suit be she wants the money...

So you consider a public official selling public records for a profit a hero?

Lets let all public officials in on this plan, I wonder what the president has for sale...

Re:Public Record?

[pla]

but also protects identifying data like parcel ownership.

Umm, that counts as a matter of public record as well. You can go to any county office in the country and, theoretically, pull the deeds for every parcel in that county (though in many places, they consider that their little fiefdom and make it as hard as possible, without paying the outrageous fees mention in TFA, for a cheap photocopy).

They shouldn't "protect" that information, they should just make it a removeable overlay (since most uses probably don't care).

Re:There shouldn't be any profit involved

[xSauronx]

Reminds me of criminal records in North Carolina. Want a statewide record search for yourself to take to an employer (some require proof of a clean record)? $15 for a copy that takes 10 seconds to pull up. Want a handgun permit? $3 for the processing, wherein the county sheriff department run a criminal record check and are required by law to contact at least 2 references before approving the permit.

Re:Public Record?

[frankie]

In Southern Building Code vs Veeck [google.com]:

The Fifth Circuit further observed that laws are not subject to federal copyright law, and "public ownership of the law means that 'the law' is in the 'public domain' for whatever use the citizens choose to make of it."

Re:Public Record?

[penix1]

Disclaimer: I live in WV and more importantly, in Kanawha County where this is happening. More, I do GIS for a living so I'm biased to the max in this...

All the tax assessors in WV have been doing a very poor job at property assessments and for years have buried it in poor paper maps. I have been to municipalities that haven't updated their tax maps in decades. I've also seen the quality of these maps and believe me, until recently they were very sketchy at best. We have had the difference between tax ticket method of determining Fair Market Value with a multiplier of 4.0 and appraised value of over double. In a properly assessed county by contrast, a 1.67 multiplier yields the appraised value. What that means is that Kanawha County is losing out on a huge amount of taxes all because the assessor's office is corrupt as all get out. This causes politicians to panic as they see dwindling taxes and before you know it those that are paying a fair share are having their property taxes increased all because the assessor isn't doing their jobs properly.

More broadly, municipalities have relied on the fees charged for paper copies of public documents so much that they feel threatened by electronic distribution. In this case it is the assessor's office but I have seen this in other areas such as deeds, birth / death certification, building permits, etc. They are seeing it as a revenue stream instead of something the public already paid for. This thinking needs to be defeated as well as those that oppose full and free disclosure.

I agree with you that all the information in a tax assessment of real property should be public record if for no other reason than the fact that the public has already paid for that information.

Re:Public Record?

[Zymergy]

They *are* indeed Public Records. You have every right to go see them. (Many Counties have you file an affidavit of identity and/or purpose to protect them from stalkers and identity thieves, etc...)
Just go down to your local County Assessor's Office and/or County Clerk's Office and/or Court Clerk's Office and you may well be surprised what are in public records. (Of course, the hours of operation are M-F 8-5 typically) I have to tell you, it beats Googleing someone (if you know what county they live in and have the time to go there during banker's hours.)
This is about loss of per-copy income to the particular clerk's office from providing copies of official documents and plat maps. (Which will still have to be paid for if a "certified" copy is needed for court proceedings, etc..) The clerk will just have to raise the cost of the copies made to offset the losses or raise some other tax or fee to offset the loss (such as filing fees).
The clerk's offices in my state are non-profit, and believe me... they do spend the money on improving their products and services. They are non-profit and headed by a publicly-elected official.
As this particular office FTA provides *.TIF images of their official Documents/Instruments/Plats, either they are particularly advanced technologically for an Assessor's/Clerk's office, or they are contractually outsourcing to a third party document archiving company.. Either way, the Judge's orders make the Assessor's/Clerk's business model fail and they will need to charge exorbitant rates to maintain their contract or stop producing scans on all files Legal Documents and Instruments.

Many courthouses in my state have a similar online 3rd-Party records system for the County Clerk's Records (but not all Counties contribute):
http://okcountyrecords.com/index.php [okcountyrecords.com]
(You will have to file an affidavit and obtain a *free* login from a participating county's County Clerk to view read-only non-printable PDF's of records, however, you can pay $1 per page and print it locally (unlocks the PDF file and removes watermark) or have clean copies mailed to you. There are also State Supreme Court Network Records Online covering the largest 13 counties in my state: http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/start.asp?viewType=DOCKETS [oscn.net]
My State's District Court Records are Online too: http://www.odcr.com/ [odcr.com]

But, for now, County (Tax) Assessor's Offices' in each county of my state are not online (that I am aware of).. A special trip to every county courthouse is needed.
I politely pay a modest fee for an official copy of the surface ownership plat map and list of any/all surface owners (for any given legally described section of land I am researching.)

It is now quite common for digital cameras to be used in public court record vaults statewide (with completed free filed affidavit), however, flash is not allowed and you are not allowed to take images of the handwritten index books. NOTE: These Index books are NOT public records, they are the handwritten indices which the County Clerk use as a means to organize the seemingly otherwise random public records by physical location (legal land description). There are thousands of volumes of records with 500-800 pages each dating back to Statehood. The County clerks typically charge $1 per page to obtain a copy of each page of their non-public indexes covering the library of public records. They will allow you to use their index books freely as long as you follow the posted rules and agree to not scan or take photos of their books.

This raises the crux of the argument of the Assessor's Office. Tax records, though being some of the most accurate and up-to-date records, ARE public records. And from the read, they are resisting placing their tax maps online. These Assessor's Office tax surface-plat maps are akin to the County Clerk's Index bo

Re:Public Record?

[Zymergy]

You make a good point, but the tax maps are not necessarily the same as public records.
-This is about a private company profiting from the derived works of the Tax Assessors from the actual public records.
The written documents they are created from by the County Assessor's Offices' are Public Records. It is these *written* Legal Tax Assessment Records (written descriptions, not maps) that are Public Documents not the plat maps of surface ownership created from them (unless one is filed into the record). These "maps" are in-house documents the Assessor's create to assist in their tracking of and future Assessing of geographic property values and any improvements made to it.
In my state they physically come around on foot and even take pictures of any structures or "improvements" made to the property for tax assessment purposes. I recently built a large Steel/Concrete Garage/Shop beside my home and sure enough.. it raised my property values and taxes when the County Assessor's field team came around. (Which also raised my property insurance rates.) These "Surface Plat Maps" are created at great expense *from public written records* by every county and kept on file in the County Assessor's Office.

It is these very in-house surface plat ownership maps which are made by the County Assessor's Offices from *written* publicly available documents (Legal Instruments) that the FOIA Request was intended to obtain FTA. These maps are made at considerable expense by every County Assessor's Office using mapmakers and field survey crews. They are NOT actually public records, however, each office will make you a copy of them at $8 per page (or whatever).
The maps are created FROM public written records and are intended to assist the Tax Assessor's and their field researchers (and anyone else willing to take notes from simply *viewing* the plats in the Assessor's Office for free *or* any party wanting to pay the $8 per page for a copy.

What has actually happened here is the counties instead of physically making a copy per page, have scanned the maps into *.TIF images for the benefit of all (and they charge $8 to print one of their images).
This company "Seneca Technologies" has misled/misinformed/neglected to tell the whole story to the FOIA Judge into believing the maps are public records. Now they are placing them online to freely distribute. This is actually a violation of the County Assessor's rights.
Seneca Technologies at any time can obtain the written tax assessment PUBLIC documents and draft up to date surface plat maps themselves out of the millions of Legal Tax Instruments for the the state of West Virginia and post the maps themselves. But instead Millions of Tax dollars have been spent to create these maps by every County Assessor and one judge decides to give them to a for-profit company to give away (without affidavits of identity filed for security purposes on who might be "researching" in them, think criminals).

The Assessor's Offices of West Virginia (and I am sure in may other places in America) are learning very important lessons here.
SCAN NOTHING. FORCE PAPER COPIES ONLY. That way when a judge orders 20,936 plat map pages to be given over to a private for-profit third party for $20, they CAN BE BILLED a reasonable $8 fee each for every page.
Also, there is nothing illegal about the County Assessor from charging more $ for every tax filing (and through a vote also raising property taxes) now that their already subsidized filing fees (from selling $8 copies of THEIR created maps FROM public records) must now be "given" away. Their public above-board budgets consider that $8 per page copy fee.
Also showing up in person to get copies (even if digital) restricts Nigerian Scammers (and Stalkers and other Criminals such as Identity Thieves, etc..) from reading West Virginia, USA Tax Records freely online without showing their happy faces in the Courthouses. (NOTE: Most Felons and Criminals fail to research their targets IN PERSON in the County Cou

Re:Public Record?

[penix1]

It isn't just tax maps that are sold but any public record documents As I pointed out in my post. Tax maps in particular they sell loads of considering until recently you couldn't get them electronically and they are required before you buy or sell property, do construction and even get a mortgage. The tax map is also used in conjunction with the FEMA NFIP flood map to determine flood insurance requirements (something that is big in WV given our terrain).

Re:Public Record?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently not. About 20 years ago I worked for a software firm that did shortest path routing (mostly for trucking companies) using the official state highway maps. It turns out that all of these were copywritten by Rand Mcnally even though the states did all the work. Eventually the company sold out to Rand Mcnally and the owners went away rich, I lost my job.

Here in the US the public funds a lot of stuff that ends up in private hands, just look at the Internet. Just look at most of the genetics research. The deal is this: go get yourself a million dollar SBIR grant from (name your favorite agency), create a product, sell it and get rich. The federal government has become THE funding source for the very rich. Republicans may bellyache about to much governmental spending but just look at the budget when Republicans are in office. The Government is a tit to be sucked dry by rich Republicans.