When Seneca Technologies President Will White won his public records lawsuit against the state of West Virginia, he did what any Web entrepreneur would do with his newly-acquired bevy of local tax maps — he posted the information on his website. That didn’t sit well with Kanawha County Tax Assessor Phyllis Gatson, who is asking a court to force Seneca to take the maps off the Web. Why should you care?
Well, for starters, if Gatson wins her case, it could impact other Web sites and bloggers that make public government records available on the Internet.
Public Citizen filed a brief today in support of Seneca and will argue the case in court Friday.
Paul Alan Levy, an attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group, says Gatson’s move is an unconstitutional prior restraint of Seneca’s right to free speech. Read the news release.
Gatson’s biggest beef with Seneca seems to be that it is providing free access to maps that West Virginia’s tax assessors charge people $8 apiece for in a paper version.
In fact, when Seneca first requested electronic versions of the more than 20,000 local tax maps, the state handed the Charleston, W. Va. company a bill for $225,648. Thankfully, as part of Seneca’s FOIA suit, the charge for the maps was knocked down to a $20 processing fee.
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I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Mike Harmon
What a scam, too bad the ‘jig is up’ for them
[...] Alan Levy writes "The county tax assessor in Charleston, West Virginia, has sued a local tech company that had the audacity to post public tax maps from the entire state of West Virginia on its web site. The company obtained the maps under the [...]
Ah yes, a good old “interference with a business model” lawsuit. What a bunch of useless scumbags.
The goverment at work, duh! Good for him, hope he wins on all counts because these are public records and “should be free except for a SMALL fee”.
Well, it looks like the tax assessor is rethinking her legal strategy. She canceled the planned court hearing this morning. For now, the maps can stay up on the Seneca site.
very nice web site. My English is not so good, so I do not understandt it well, but it seems very good. Thanks