A personal computer a few feet away from the metro desk is forever changing the way reporters research county records at the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News. The PC provides a direct line into the county's computer With a few keystrokes, reporters can examine current Montgomery County property tax records, deeds, mortgages, auto titles, civil court dockets and file indices, and divorce and domestic violence filings.
Incoming weeks we expect to go online with the county jail and criminal court, and we're negotiating for access to the board of election's voter registration files. Making the technological link for the system was far easier than getting past county officeholders. We made a formal request for access last September. The officeholders turned it over to an attorney to examine privacy issues and the applicability of Ohio's Public Records Law.
The attorney decided the law was on our side. The Dayton Daily News is paying Montgomery County $125 per month to service and maintain the hookup. There is no hourly or per minute charge. We also have to pay $480 per year for a dedicated telephone line. The equipment, including a special modem and a device to enable our PC to emulate a county dedicated terminal, cost $1,180. One drawback to the system is that we can't download data onto a diskette or hard disk drive.
However, we can print copies of the records. The newsroom's computer link to the county showed its potential the same day it was connected. Reporters were responding to tips that a financially troubled department store chain might close its downtown store. With an instruction manual at his side, deputy metro editor John Erickson typed in the codes that enabled us to gain entry into property tax records.
Within minutes he determined that the store was $800,000 behind on its taxes. For courts reporter Rob Modic the hook-up meant a page one story. Modic had a letter from a college student who believed her immigration attorney had skipped town with her money. He also had a motion filed by the local bar association seeking to reassign the immigration attorney's clients. An hour on the system with Erickson convinced Modic he had more.
The county's electronic records showed the attorney had purchased a $305,000 home with a $275,000 mortgage less than a year ago. They showed that he had taken out a second mortgage for $40,000 nine days before leaving town in July. They showed he had bought a $40,000 Mercedes. They showed federal tax liens of $36,825 had been placed on the man's home and $22,504 on his business. They showed a list of creditors who had sued him along with attorneys' names and telephone numbers.
The county's computer database only summarized court records. Modic still needed to read some of the files for details. The newsroom hook-up helped him determine which cases held the most promise. Within minutes of closing time at the courthouse, he telephoned clerks, gave them the case numbers, asked them to pull the files and told them he was on his way. By 7:30 p.m., Modic moved a page one story that reported, in fascinating detail, the shell game this attorney had been playing.
Modic estimated it would have taken him at least another day to turn his story had not a few computer commands taken the place of a maze of offices staffed by bureaucrats who hate being bothered. More than 40 reporters and editors, including feature and sports writers, have been trained on the system. One of them is minority affairs reporter Edwina Blackwell Clark. Clark used the PC to tap into county auto title records.
She was working a deadline story about a man accused by authorities of being a broker of undocumented workers. The county computer divulged that the man bought seven cars last year and owned two apartments, which authorities later said were for the undocumented workers.