A better county Web site

Today on "Talk of the Town," assistant University of Alabama journalism professor Chris Roberts, an old friend of mine, came on for a few minutes to discuss the fairly new trend of Web sites for county governments. In Sunday's Birmingham News (his old newspaper), Roberts talked about the subject in an ed-op piece, which also coincided with Sunshine Week. That is a time set aside to emphasize the importance of making government documents and resources available to the public at large and calling attention to what is legally in place to do such work.

Finding government information on Web sites may sound like a small subject, but many people are now getting much of their information from Web sites now. Perhaps some people are poor and can't afford a computer, but in that case others with a computer can take more time to look up that information for the less fortunate. However, we are moving to a society where many people have access to computers, even at libraries for free.

Moreover, in a very busy world we live in today and with commuter situations that take people out of the county to work, it is easier to look up this information by the Internet. Making it available allows the public to do what reporters have done for years -- to be the watchdog over the government. By putting contracts, bids, court dockets, arrest information, meeting agendas and more on the Web, we are able to better keep track of government officials. It is not to say everything they are doing is bad, but it makes for more transparency and quicker response in the 21st century to have material scanned in quickly for the public to browse through.

In the old days, they might have to fight traffic, pay fees for photocopying and then carry reams of paperwork. Now government is available to watch over while sitting in your pajamas at a computer. Maybe it shouldn't be THAT comfortable, but it certainly makes it easier for the common folk, especially the busy ones who have jobs to do, to find out what the people they are paying are actually doing.

Roberts uses the example in Sunday's column that former Jefferson County Commissioner Jeff Germany, who used non-profits to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to friends and relatives, could have been tracked as the spending was in line items in county agendas and minutes -- records that Roberts said are still not online.

Roberts and some of his students marked Sunshine Week by conducting the first survey in the state that I know about concerning county Web sites. (A similar one is being finished about city Web sites. The county results can be found at www.chrisrob.com/sunshine.) What they found out is discouraging. Out of 67 counties, 25 still don't have Web sites and the rest vary wildly in the quality of useful information. Only 17 counties even include the minutes of minutes and only 11 had timely links to agendas for upcoming meetings.

That brings us to Walker County, which pays Walker Web $1,500 a year to maintain a Web site (http://www.walkercounty.com/) that has been around for a while. However, some departments have apparently never even submitted information to complete their pages, such as the sanitation department. Walker County did state the time but did not include the place of the meetings. The agendas are not posted, as a county official indicated it has not been set up for her to make the postings herself and sometimes the agenda is not completed anyway. More than two dozen other counties have their agendas posted online.

The county does post some contact information and commission district maps. There is an ability to pay for some items, such as in renewing tags online, printing business license applications to pay by mail, renewing hunting and fishing licenses online and paying sales tax revenue online. However, on the flip side, finding property values and a property map was not apparent. About 29 counties gave an employee directory, but Walker did not have one. It did not post its budget, contracts or requests for bids. No police or sheriff reports, nor any jail logs, were on the site (even though Carbon Hill and Winston County were doing similar items on their Web sites). The county did not follow Winston's lead to put court dockets directly on the site; instead, it gave a link to the state's AlaCourt site, which usually requires a subscription fee.

It would seem that it is time to sit down with Walker Web and county departments to see what can be done for taxpayers to get their money's worth. To his credit, Walker County Commission Chairman Bruce Hamrick said today he was interested in looking into an update and noticed recently some things were still missing from the site. He wanted a breakdown of some of the information from Roberts' study in comparison with other counties. He did note there is the problem of how smaller counties can afford to provide so many services on a Web site and that there is only so much time to make postings.

Hamrick did note there is a possible solution being bantered around. There is apparently some talk within the Association of County Commissioners of Alabama to possibly handle the service for all the counties, apparently pooling resources. Roberts said Monday that this would be an excellent idea and hopes that it takes off as a way to help the counties. It could particularly help many smaller counties that may feel they cannot afford in some ways to tackle a project. Certainly there has been great advancement in the state court system for bringing online services online, as lawyers are now getting used to filing and researching cases electronically. The association and the Alabama League of Municipalities might be able to undertake similar projects.

At any rate, county and city Web sites are the next wave of government service. Anyone who thinks it is premature to discuss the impact of the Internet can only see newspapers shutting down in Denver, Seattle and other areas to note that the future is here. It is imperative that the public be served in an efficient, cost-effective way. It also helps the public to take up its role again as the true boss of all those politicians who try to take advantage of the voters.

Interesting thing about that study, by the way: When I noted one or two mistakes in the results concerning Walker County, Roberts admitted he had already started finding them and updating the results. In fact, since they went online, others around the state are calling in. Believe it or not, he didn't sound displeased, because this is the point about oversight that he is making when it comes to the general public. If they can start correcting the study this quickly, think what they could do with county and city governments when their material goes online.