A California county’s three-year battle to prevent a nonprofit group from obtaining public mapping data has ended disastrously for the county after it was ordered by a court to pay the group $500,000 in legal costs.
Last February, Santa Clara County, the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, was ordered to hand over the public records to the California First Amendment Coalition for a minimal duplication fee after initially trying to charge $250,000 for the data and then appealing to the federal government to designate the data a national security secret that couldn’t be released. This week the county paid out to the coalition twice the amount in legal fees that it had once hoped to rake in as profit for the data.
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In 2006, the coalition used the state’s sunshine law to ask for a digital, data-rich map compiled by the county. Called a geographic information system, or GIS, parcel basemap database, the map shows the boundaries of 450,000 real estate parcels in Silicon Valley, along with overlaid aerial photos, street addresses and other data.
The county demanded $250,000 for the information, along with a signed nondisclosure agreement asserting that the coalition wouldn’t redistribute it, even though other California counties provide the same data for free or charge a minimal duplication fee.
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