The county has appealed a court ruling that would force it to
disclose an electronic map of Santa Clara County without charging
exorbitant fees.
Gilroy – The county has appealed a court ruling that would force it to disclose an electronic map of Santa Clara County without charging exorbitant fees.
Releasing the county’s Geographic Information Systems base map represents a threat to national security, the county argues in an appeal filed June 12 with the state’s Sixth Appellate District court. A superior court rejected that argument in May, pointing out that officials currently sell the map to anyone able to afford fees.
“Other people have received it and that is true, but it was with an end-user agreement that they would keep the information private and would only use it for their private purposes,” said County Counsel Ann Ravel. “If we have the ability to determine who’s going to use it, and they’re going to use it in a way that’s consistent with what we believe is appropriate, we have no problem with that.”
The so-called “base map” provides a computerized, visual depiction of all land in the county and shows such things as the boundaries of all property parcels, the tax assessor’s parcel number for all properties, and the street address for each parcel. Additional data layers include public utilities, soil survey information, ambulance response areas, geological fault lines and flood zones.
The county has argued that releasing the location of water utility lines and meters pose a national security threat. Ravel said that she is uncertain if that data could be extracted from the map, though the county’s GIS administrators said in court that the water lines could not be extracted, according to Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, an open government watchdog group.
“We’ve made it very clear that we have no interest in putting into public circulation any information that could breach national security, because that’s not what the First Amendment is about,” Scheer said. “Our interest is in putting in the public domain, government records of value and use to the public that were paid for with public dollars. If we could be convinced that there really was something sensitive there, we would take the records without that sensitive information … But they’ve never treated this as something remotely sensitive. They’ve treated it as fair game for anybody, as long as you have the money.”
The county currently offers the base map data to the public at fees that are vastly higher than what the Public Records Act allows. The fee for county-wide parcel information, for example, is about $250,000. In addition, those receiving the data are required by the county to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
Scheer predicted the appeals process would last two or three months.
