[From GovAccess] Date: Wed Feb 23 18:07:44 1994 From: John Gilmore Subject: Bay Guardian covers SF Sunshine Ordinance forcing city data at cost SAN FRANCISCO EXPANDS PUBLIC ACCESS, REDUCES DATA-PEDDLING GOVT PROFITS B'guardian, 23 Feb 94, page 10. DATA WILL GET CHEAPER High price of tapes may have violated Sunshine Law The San Francisco Assessor's Office has apparently broken the city's Sunshine Law by overcharging citizens for copies of computerized public records. 235 lines more (you've seen 51%) Message 681/854 From Jim Warren Page 13 A self-described "electronic activist", however, has forced Assessor Doris Ward to reduce the price of computer data tapes -- at least for the time being -- from $2,000 to $90. Jim Stevens, who requested copies of two computer data tapes of property records from the Assessor's Office, was told they would cost him plenty. "As a taxpayer, I feel I have already paid them to acquire this information," Stevens told the Bay Guardian. "You can imagine my surprise when they told me to pay $2,000 to get a copy of it." Since the Sunshine Ordinance became law on Dec. 16, public records, including computerized information, must be made available to the public at the cost of duplication. "It is the intent of the act that the public have this [information] as inexpensively as possible without the public agency incurring any costs", said California First Amendment Coalition director Terry Francke, who authored the law. He added that "even $500 seems awfully high." Only after the Bay Guardian began an investigation into the matter last week did the Assessor's Office agree to lower the price. New prices for computerized data have not yet been set, but Ward told the Bay Guardian that, meanwhile, data tapes will be sold for $90. "We're going to lose a lot of money [under the Sunshine Law]", Ward said. "We were selling some of our data to Realtors for as much as $8,000. Of course the people that pay $8,000 are not little ordinary citizens. They're from corporations like Transamerica." The Assessor's Office master tapes list the ownership and assessed value of every property in San Francisco. Stevens hopes to use the data to scrutinize the real estate holdings of politicians whose decisions might be biased by their financial holdings. The data are also valuable to political campaigns that want to direct their mail at specific demographic groups. Stevens, treasurer of the 1990 Waterfront Initiative campaign, said that a campaign backed by big business could afford to pay $2,000 while a grassroots campaign could not. Bill Mesler