Roddey said he respected privacy and safety concerns, but could not support the change because there have been no reported problems in Allegheny County or dozens of other counties across the United States that put such real estate information on the Internet.
'The need to provide complete assessment information in an easily accessible format must be balanced against the concern for public safety,' Roddey wrote in a veto message to County Council. 'In weighing these competing interests, I feel that the scales tilt in favor of leaving the name search function on the County's Web site.'
Democrats, with 10 votes on the 15-member council, have the ability to override a veto as long as all their lawmakers are present. Councilman Rick Schwartz, a Plum Democrat who had spearheaded the measure over safety and privacy concerns, said it was too early to say whether he could muster the necessary votes.
Many property owners have used name searches to check the assessed values of other properties as part of research toward filing an assessment appeal. About 89,000 appeals were filed with the county by the June 1 deadline.
The county's Web site contains owners' names, addresses, property photographs and other records for all 560,000 pieces of property in the county. Of more than 5 million searches done through the Web site since it opened in January, about two-thirds were done by the owner's name.
Schwartz said he was 'extremely disappointed' by the veto. He said an override vote, which must be done within 30 days, would likely take place July 10.
'An attempt to override the veto is the next step as far as I am concerned,' Schwartz said.
By a 12-2 vote, which included three Republicans, County Council voted June 19 to stop the name searches.
'We will see how honorable the Republicans are now,' Schwartz said.
No cases of criminal misuse of Internet-based real estate records have been reported locally or by dozens of other counties that provide property ownership records in that way, according to the National Association of Counties.
Earlier this month, Roddey vetoed a move by county lawmakers to remove owners' names altogether from the Web site as a possible violation of state open records law.
Lawmakers failed to override that veto, but instead voted to prevent Web users from searching assessment documents by the property owner's name.
The restriction would have applied only to those only at the county's Internet site and not to public computers in county real estate offices Downtown, where anyone can search for owners' names.
As reported last month by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, if the ability to search by owner's name is removed from the county's Web site, which is free, that same information would remain available to those willing to pay for it.
The county also offers the same property records, which can be searched by name, on a separate subscriber-only Web site. Several hundred businesses, mostly in real estate and title research, pay for this service.
The County Council recently set up a committee, suggested by Schwartz, to study privacy issues surrounding county records. The committee has not yet met.
Brian Nearing can be reached at bnearing@tribweb.com or (412) 391-0927.
