Posted: Tuesday, August 13, 2013 4:00 pm | Updated: 5:04 pm, Tue Aug 13, 2013.
Posted on August 13, 2013
Pennsbury school board member Simon Campbell has described his passion for local politics as a “labor of love or labor of insanity.”But he’s not entitled to free labor from officials in the county government, a state agency has ruled.The Pennsylvania Office of Open Records has decided that Campbell must pay $1,074 in government fees after requesting 11,935 records from the Bucks County Board of Assessment.
In June, Campbell requested the “most recent property assessment records for Tullytown and Falls showing at a minimum each of the property owner’s name, address and the assessed value of the property.”
Those records are publicly available on Bucks County’s government website. But Campbell requested the information be placed into an Excel spreadsheet, and so was charged 9 cents per tax parcel, county officials said.
Campbell refused to pay the bill. The independent futures trader from Lower Makefield said he was never told about the fees, and shouldn't have to pay the bill.
But county and state officials told a different story.
According to the ruling, Campbell had requested similar records from Bucks County in the past and was charged similar fees. In July 2011, Campbell requested records for 732 properties in Tullytown and was charged a fee of 9 cents per tax parcel, or $65.88, state officials said. According to the ruling, Montgomery County charges a fee of 7 cents a parcel and Chester County charges 5.25 cents a parcel.
Pennsylvania Appeals Officer Charles Rees Brown described Campbell as “a sophisticated and frequent user of this law” who “previously filed requests for similar records with this very agency and been assessed the fee of which he is now complaining that he had no notice.”
Campbell, a political conservative and anti-union crusader, was recently featured on the premiere episode of the new Pennsylvania Cable Network documentary series “PA Gadflies.” Episodes of the show are available online at http://pcntv.com/pa-gadflies/
In June, Campbell requested the “most recent property assessment records for Tullytown and Falls showing at a minimum each of the property owner’s name, address and the assessed value of the property.”
Those records are publicly available on Bucks County’s government website. But Campbell requested the information be placed into an Excel spreadsheet, and so was charged 9 cents per tax parcel, county officials said.
Campbell refused to pay the bill. The independent futures trader from Lower Makefield said he was never told about the fees, and shouldn't have to pay the bill.
But county and state officials told a different story.
According to the ruling, Campbell had requested similar records from Bucks County in the past and was charged similar fees. In July 2011, Campbell requested records for 732 properties in Tullytown and was charged a fee of 9 cents per tax parcel, or $65.88, state officials said. According to the ruling, Montgomery County charges a fee of 7 cents a parcel and Chester County charges 5.25 cents a parcel.
Pennsylvania Appeals Officer Charles Rees Brown described Campbell as “a sophisticated and frequent user of this law” who “previously filed requests for similar records with this very agency and been assessed the fee of which he is now complaining that he had no notice.”
Campbell, a political conservative and anti-union crusader, was recently featured on the premiere episode of the new Pennsylvania Cable Network documentary series “PA Gadflies.” Episodes of the show are available online at http://pcntv.com/pa-gadflies/
15 comments:
Whew! Common sense actually prevails from time to time. Legally, he didn't have a leg to stand on. Now it comes out that he “previously filed requests for similar records with this very agency and been assessed the fee of which he is now complaining that he had no notice.”
Yes indeed, it takes a special kind of bravado ...
5 comments:
FAIRLESS 500 posted at 6:09 pm on Tue, Aug 13, 2013.
Posts: 537
Stupid is as stupid does.
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FAIRLESS 500 posted at 6:08 pm on Tue, Aug 13, 2013.
Posts: 537
Cough up the hairball, Campbell.
Even the BCCT Editorial Board could not pull your knickers out
of the fire.
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RabidRider posted at 5:43 pm on Tue, Aug 13, 2013.
Posts: 1075
"But county and state officials told a different story."
Not a different story . . . but the OTHER SIDE OF THE SAME STORY. . . the side of the story that the BCCP failed to get when it supported him with its editor's opinion. And you guys keep supporting him whenever he runs crying to you like a baby whenever he perceives some terrible injustice. And bites your hand.
My advice to this guy is to try getting property records from Montgomery or Chester Co. They're cheaper.
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rlh posted at 4:41 pm on Tue, Aug 13, 2013.
Posts: 60
Union or non-union who would want this guy on your side. He's in this for one thing him self. ONE WORD --NUTS
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Hmmmmm posted at 4:22 pm on Tue, Aug 13, 2013.
Posts: 75
It gives me the creeps that my name and property value is sitting on this guys home PC. Let's call it Simon porn and hope he wears pants while looking at it.
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All the great social and political activists have had to face the vicious slings and arrows of the entrenched opponents of change, and suffer occasional heinous miscarriages of justice like this. Obviously, he was the hapless victim of a vast top-to-bottom conspiracy, and the Appeals Officer is clearly one of the cogs in the conspiratorial machinery.
P.S. Not really. His legal case stunk. You could smell it a mile away.
At least he got some more attention to fill the gaping void in his psyche. Temporarily.
For the next edition of "PA Gadflies" there's only one possible candidate. MARLYS
Or Steve Worob. I'll wait for the movie. I've read the book. It sucked, even as a work of fiction.
Get ready to pay up Maryls.
Here's the sad part. If this Head Start Manor Park lawsuit goes south (and it may already be below the Mason-Dixon Line), Marlys will not have to pay up. The taxpayers of Morrisville will. And we're not talking about $1,074. We're talking upwards of $150,000, maybe even upwards of $350,000.
Ron Stout voted for this fiasco too. Just like his pal Marlys did.
He wants your vote again for another 4 years on the board.
DON'T GIVE IT TO HIM!!!!!
Vote him out!
BCCT got burned by Simon. They went to bat for him in a recent editorial, but he didn't tell them the whole story. Now BCCT is backtracking to try to save face. This gets at the honesty and trust issues floating through this blog that polarize people, and hamper progress and good decision-making. All right. I'll get off my soapbox now. Below is the follow-up BCCT editorial.
Public records aren't always free
Posted: Thursday, August 15, 2013 4:00 am | Updated: 7:16 am, Thu Aug 15, 2013.
Pennsbury school board member and anti-union crusader Simon Campbell has learned an expensive lesson from the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records: While many government records are indeed available to the public, they are not necessarily free for the asking.
Last week, we wrote about Campbell’s request for Tullytown and Falls property assessment information from Bucks County. The county supplied the records — all 11,935 of them — and then handed Campbell a bill for $1,074.15. Campbell claimed he was never told about the charge and refused to pay it.
The state office says he has to pay.
In its ruling, the agency said that while Campbell (or anyone) was entitled to the records — they are available for free on the county’s government website — he was not entitled to the time it took county officials to give him the information in the format he wanted. According to Campbell, compiling the records he asked for probably took a computer five minutes. But the county charges by the tax parcel — 9 cents apiece, hence the thousand-dollar fee. The state ruling noted neighboring counties also charge per parcel: Montgomery County charges 7 cents; Chester County, 5.25 cents.
More significant than the customary charge itself is the fact that, according to the state’s findings, Campbell should have been aware of the fee because he had requested similar records from the county in the past and been billed a similar amount: 9 cents per tax parcel. Only 732 properties were involved in that 2011 request, so the charge came to just $65.88. State appeals officer Charles Rees Brown called Campbell “a sophisticated and frequent user” of the open records law, more than strongly implying the fees the county charges for providing records should have been no secret.
In view of what’s contained in the state ruling, it appears Campbell’s plea of ignorance was groundless. Even though the county may not have explicitly warned him that his request would be expensive, we now believe — based on his prior contacts with the open records office — he should have known that asking the county to access almost 12,000 assessment records was going to be pricey.
One can make the legitimate argument that if public records are truly public, they shouldn’t carry a price tag. In fact, Campbell could have had the information for nothing if he had been willing to do the legwork. But he asked the county to compile the voluminous information, and the county office did render a service in putting it all together for him.
Maybe the county ought to offer a bulk discount.
Everyone who seeks information under the open records law should know that beyond a personal investment of time, there might be a financial investment as well.
BCCT burned itself with lousy sloppy reporting.
... and a built-in agenda they're pushing at the Editorial Board. It's like they didn't bother to dig beyond the surface. They knee-jerked to a mindset without gathering the facts and thinking it through. This has a familiar ring. Where have we seen this before???
Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows that the BCCT is a joke. A recent example highlighting their ineptitude was the police scandal story in the inquirer having more information and facts than the tripe served up by Jo C. Mullane has devolved into nothing more than a troll. He seems to write articles with no research, no facts and designed with no purpose except to inflame as many readers as possible. This is journalism? Their editorials are usually poorly researched, poorly considered, poorly written and add little or nothing to the subject matter. Even their wire stories are often a day late. The best part of that rag is the comics page.
Funny how Simon is so sharp on the minutiae of law when it serves him but pleads ignorance when it costs him. Glad he got what was coming. Wish it had cost more. Did he really think that the labor that goes into entering that data into a spreadsheet was free? If he really wanted to serve the people of this state (he doesn't) he would start putting all that data into a database for public consumption.
Agree. Funny also when you read the online comments, how his supporters know that it would take either 5 minutes or 30 minutes to produce the data set exactly to Simon's specifications.
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