While returning from the courthouse, Nick - my ride - was going to be late for work. Naturally, we stopped off at the Medical Examiner's office to pick up a record. Of who, you ask? Billy Mays, real name: William Darrell Mays.
Approaching the door it said in big letters, CLOSED. Momentarily we were so discouraged we forgot the doors are always locked until someone buzzes you in. Then we noticed the tiny letters underneath CLOSED said "Friday, due to budget cuts." Phew!
The wonderfully nice lady inside stared at the two of us like slugs were coming out of our eyes when we asked for Billy Mays autopsy report. Then, we mentioned we wanted the public record of his autopsy and she happily marched off. She returned with his full dossier, offering us whatever we desired. Nervous and slightly panicky we asked for his autopsy, not the whole folder.
She came back with two copies of his autopsy report. No charge, she said with a smile. And off we went, giddy at holding what was inside one of those terrifying color-coded folders.
Nick went off to work and I stopped at Louis Pappas for dinner. I hadn't been there since I went vegetarian and immediately regretted my decision. The wafting scent of Döner kebab is a tantalizing devil, indeed.
I dove into the report while chewing my portabella mushroom sandwich. He died in his sleep, in bed with his wife, Deborah Mays. He was in full rigor with "blood-tinged emesis" on his nightwear. The report read the authorities "arrived to find obvious death."
The detailed description of findings pleased my every voyeuristic fancy. His scalp hair has gray roots, I knew he dyed that luscious black hair - and his beard too! It also mentioned that his scrotal sac was unremarkable, which is somewhat unfortunate for him.
He died, like Dr. Adams told us, of Hypertensive and Atherosclerotic heart disease. A contributory cause was cocaine use, though none was in his system when he died. The manner of death was deemed natural. He was 50 years old.
The toxicology report listed specimens tested. This means his fluids went through the same "Specimens Receiving" door we traveled through. Ocular fluid was one of those, so yes, they removed an eye. At the very least they used a syringe to extract liquid from it.
In his system were three different opiods: Hydrocodone, Oxycodone and Tramadol. Also present were a cocktail of different prescription drugs: Alprazolam, which is Xanax, a drug for anxiety; Diazepam, which is valium; Nordiazepam, which is another anxiety drug; Benzoylecgonine, which is a residue left over from the metabolizing of cocaine; and Temazepam, which is a sleeping pill.
Now, if I were a reporter, I'd be asking, why Mays' death was not due to an abundance of prescription drugs? Sure, I know cocaine is illicit, but who says its safe to be on that many different drugs during your lifetime? The only prescription Mays was currently on was for Tramadol and Hydrocodone to cope with pain for his hip surgery that was supposed to happen the next day. Still, he had all that mess in his body at one point.
But, no. We are the United States of Rx. Have a problem? Here's a pill. Anyone can milk a doctor for legal drugs and until the autopsies of the drug industry's victims reveal the multiple factors leading to death, we will continue to be pumped full of pills. That's what Mays' wife should be outraged about.
These pills are killing us by age 50, dying a natural death, beside our wife, our husband, our children. In our home, no less, and for no apparent reason.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Thomas and Nick's Excellent Adventure
On Tuesday afternoon, Nick and I were intrepid reporters. We were men. Plowing down 275 to the courthouse, confidence was all we knew. Our certainty of hitting our target was nearly guaranteed. Surely, there must be a trial going on.
After wandering the labyrinth of courtrooms, payment queues and information desks we got some help. A kind, elderly woman with an adorable smile broke our spirit. Her name was Bryce.
"I wish someone would tell your professor that these things happen in the morning. And they start on Wednesdays, the first two days are jury selection," she said, wishing us luck in our now titanic quest to find felony courtroom 51A.
Spiritually castrated, we trudged on. No longer reporters. No longer feeling entitled. We went up and down the same stairs and elevators we had so confidently ascended (or descended) before.
Perhaps as a spiteful premonition of the futility of it all, Nick found an elevator that took us to a floor with no lights, only haunting shadows cast by the nearby shaded window. It opened to a small lobby, with locked glass doors, leading to somewhere obviously condemned. We quickly retreated.
Finally, we found courtroom 51A. It was locked. Our goal denied to us, we trudged back to the main information desk to locate some traffic courts, what was initially promised as a surefire solution. While I waited in the wrong line, Nick scored a hot tip. Courtroom 9. Also, our classmates found us and tagged along, missing out on our excellent adventure.
Our sanctuary was at the farthest reaches of the annex at the end of the building - seriously, if it had stretched anymore it would have definitely severed itself from the main Courthouse. Then the evil beast would have begun replicating like the spiteful bacterium it is, thereby consuming Tampa in a sea of inaccessibility.
***
Judge Margaret Taylor Courtney, half-bored and half-annoyed, was repeating herself for the umpteenth time to a man who clearly spoke only Spanish and did not even seem to understand his translator very well. She mockingly asked him over and over if he knew he was driving with a suspended license in this "great state of ours." He shouted "guilty", clearly panicked, and was answered with polite laughter.
The judge called three people up at a time, most pleading no contest, some being dismissed because the cited officer wrote the wrong statute on the ticket, with three ultimately headed off to jail. They came up and went faster than I could write their names and citations down. A fine of $1,000 was allotted to each of the individuals who did not show for their court date.
One man, about our age, was going to spend 10 days in jail. Certainly he would lose his job, he claimed. After waiting in handcuffs on the side for a couple minutes while the room cleared, he plead out and promised to buy a phone line for his apartment so he could be put on house arrest for 30 days.
Another man had a comically large list of tickets: 23 in Dade, 1 in Collier, 1 in Columbia and 7 more outside Hillsborough, as well as a long list of those within the county. Judge Courtney seemed to enjoy reading the list and insisted he be quiet while she counted them off. Counter-intuitively, she assured him that he could get his license back after he paid them all. Ultimately, he was sentenced to 12 months of probation.
The judge seemed to know, and we did too, that he would be back. They would get the blood that he owed. If he paid his tickets and behaved, then the courts won. If he did not, then he would be behind bars and they still won.
After wandering the labyrinth of courtrooms, payment queues and information desks we got some help. A kind, elderly woman with an adorable smile broke our spirit. Her name was Bryce.
"I wish someone would tell your professor that these things happen in the morning. And they start on Wednesdays, the first two days are jury selection," she said, wishing us luck in our now titanic quest to find felony courtroom 51A.
Spiritually castrated, we trudged on. No longer reporters. No longer feeling entitled. We went up and down the same stairs and elevators we had so confidently ascended (or descended) before.
Perhaps as a spiteful premonition of the futility of it all, Nick found an elevator that took us to a floor with no lights, only haunting shadows cast by the nearby shaded window. It opened to a small lobby, with locked glass doors, leading to somewhere obviously condemned. We quickly retreated.
Finally, we found courtroom 51A. It was locked. Our goal denied to us, we trudged back to the main information desk to locate some traffic courts, what was initially promised as a surefire solution. While I waited in the wrong line, Nick scored a hot tip. Courtroom 9. Also, our classmates found us and tagged along, missing out on our excellent adventure.
Our sanctuary was at the farthest reaches of the annex at the end of the building - seriously, if it had stretched anymore it would have definitely severed itself from the main Courthouse. Then the evil beast would have begun replicating like the spiteful bacterium it is, thereby consuming Tampa in a sea of inaccessibility.
***
Judge Margaret Taylor Courtney, half-bored and half-annoyed, was repeating herself for the umpteenth time to a man who clearly spoke only Spanish and did not even seem to understand his translator very well. She mockingly asked him over and over if he knew he was driving with a suspended license in this "great state of ours." He shouted "guilty", clearly panicked, and was answered with polite laughter.
The judge called three people up at a time, most pleading no contest, some being dismissed because the cited officer wrote the wrong statute on the ticket, with three ultimately headed off to jail. They came up and went faster than I could write their names and citations down. A fine of $1,000 was allotted to each of the individuals who did not show for their court date.
One man, about our age, was going to spend 10 days in jail. Certainly he would lose his job, he claimed. After waiting in handcuffs on the side for a couple minutes while the room cleared, he plead out and promised to buy a phone line for his apartment so he could be put on house arrest for 30 days.
Another man had a comically large list of tickets: 23 in Dade, 1 in Collier, 1 in Columbia and 7 more outside Hillsborough, as well as a long list of those within the county. Judge Courtney seemed to enjoy reading the list and insisted he be quiet while she counted them off. Counter-intuitively, she assured him that he could get his license back after he paid them all. Ultimately, he was sentenced to 12 months of probation.
The judge seemed to know, and we did too, that he would be back. They would get the blood that he owed. If he paid his tickets and behaved, then the courts won. If he did not, then he would be behind bars and they still won.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Too gross for comfort
Bernard Adams is charged with determining the cause of death according to Florida Statute chapter 406. Unless a person dies in the care of a physician or of old age, Adams will be determining the cause of death - also if they wish to be buried at sea, cremated or have their body donated to science. There are about 10,000 reported deaths every year in Hillsborough, most are cremated. The medical examiner gets about 1,600 to verify and of those about 1,300 are autopsied.
Adams definitely has his hands full, though I'm sure that's not the proper metaphor for a medical doctor who determines cause of death for a living. The question "...of what?" comes to mind.
He made it clear that not every corpse is autopsied. It isn't like flags unfurl, trumpets sound and the answer is revealed when you open someone up, he said. Most of the time he can tell just be looking and poking around. His office also does extensive investigations into family history and such when a person comes through their office.
Everyone there is in good humor. By this I mean morbid.
The toxicology lab was my favorite. Drug deaths are some of the most common in Hillsborough, so the place really gets put through its paces.
The names of the rooms in the tox-lab were Specimens Receiving, Extraction Lab and Instrument Lab (the gas mass spectrometers and chromatograph). The only essence of Sci-Fi wonderland missing was a blaring alarm and flashing red light. The air is full of beeps, whirrs of fans, the constant hum of the impressive air conditioning unit and punctuated by the occasional burst of compressed air.
Each person that comes through generates a file, that backs up for 10 years and is color-coded by a plastic tab on the end. Black for traffic fatality, yellow for suicide, red for homicide, orange for pending, and God knows what for pink and white. After their decade of duty these files are moved to the county records center.
The Medical Examiner's office is hardly a depressing place. The worst of it would not be the faint smell of death in the autopsy room, nor a plucked eyeball going splat on a table, nor the dry humor that comes with the place. It's the erasure of a person's existence and purifying it down to a folder, ear-marked by a colored tab, probably the same kind in a school supply section at a Wal-Mart or Target.
Adams definitely has his hands full, though I'm sure that's not the proper metaphor for a medical doctor who determines cause of death for a living. The question "...of what?" comes to mind.
He made it clear that not every corpse is autopsied. It isn't like flags unfurl, trumpets sound and the answer is revealed when you open someone up, he said. Most of the time he can tell just be looking and poking around. His office also does extensive investigations into family history and such when a person comes through their office.
Everyone there is in good humor. By this I mean morbid.
The toxicology lab was my favorite. Drug deaths are some of the most common in Hillsborough, so the place really gets put through its paces.
The names of the rooms in the tox-lab were Specimens Receiving, Extraction Lab and Instrument Lab (the gas mass spectrometers and chromatograph). The only essence of Sci-Fi wonderland missing was a blaring alarm and flashing red light. The air is full of beeps, whirrs of fans, the constant hum of the impressive air conditioning unit and punctuated by the occasional burst of compressed air.
Each person that comes through generates a file, that backs up for 10 years and is color-coded by a plastic tab on the end. Black for traffic fatality, yellow for suicide, red for homicide, orange for pending, and God knows what for pink and white. After their decade of duty these files are moved to the county records center.
The Medical Examiner's office is hardly a depressing place. The worst of it would not be the faint smell of death in the autopsy room, nor a plucked eyeball going splat on a table, nor the dry humor that comes with the place. It's the erasure of a person's existence and purifying it down to a folder, ear-marked by a colored tab, probably the same kind in a school supply section at a Wal-Mart or Target.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
A Castle on a River
Tampa's news nexus is located at a beautiful plot along the Hillsborough river. The Sheraton Riverwalk is across the way; the unmistakable clay-colored spires of the University of Tampa are directly adjacent. Inside it's dark core, rows upon rows of televisions display questionable programming: an interview of Kid Rock by a big-breasted blonde, Judge Joe, and a soccer game.
Down from the second floor are the studios. Two tall stools flanked a tall nightstand holding two coffee cups: pure morning show. The next set was the news, with its separate walkways leading to weather and sports sections. Only at places like Disney or Universal Studios have I seen other disenchanted and seemingly haunted sets.
Fallen symbols of our society surrounded us. Broadcast has been repudiated for being shallow, soft and sycophantic. Fortunately, the quiet, raspy man who greeted us was anything but these unpleasant adjectives.
Steve Andrews emphasized being tough, but respectable. He gets what he wants from sources and has only suffered the occasional death threat. A sign of a good journalist in my book!
Like everyone we meet, Andrews was full of great stories. The point of all of them being this: you can use public records to circumvent the tired broadcast practices of regurgitating wire stories, entertainment news and dueling political bobble-heads.
Judge Stringer, the focus of one of his anecdotes, was just disbarred this morning, according to a story written by Steve Andrews. Which I am looking at right now. Whoa! Things just got cosmic.
Stringer is a legend in the Tampa area. He was the first black judge in Tampa Bay and a role model to everyone growing up in the post-civil rights era. None of his colleagues ever had anything negative to say about him, said Andrews - to us, not in the article. I know, it's all very surreal.
What Thomas Stringer did, was funnel money from a debt-ridden stripper "friend" into personal bank accounts. His "friend", stripper Christy Yamanaka, made records of everything Stringer did in her favor. She recorded their phone conversations, made copies of bank records and held on to all the receipts.
Andrews' professionalism brought Yamanaka to him in the first place. At first he thought she was just some crazy person trying to discredit a legend. In the end, after she'd told her story, Andrews knew he needed the judge to talk, and talk he did once he realized what was going down.
When I look at it now, maybe the only reason broadcast can get away with holding people accountable and being hard-hitting is to include elements of the trashy. Then again, that just might be the human condition - elements of the trashy.
Down from the second floor are the studios. Two tall stools flanked a tall nightstand holding two coffee cups: pure morning show. The next set was the news, with its separate walkways leading to weather and sports sections. Only at places like Disney or Universal Studios have I seen other disenchanted and seemingly haunted sets.
Fallen symbols of our society surrounded us. Broadcast has been repudiated for being shallow, soft and sycophantic. Fortunately, the quiet, raspy man who greeted us was anything but these unpleasant adjectives.
Steve Andrews emphasized being tough, but respectable. He gets what he wants from sources and has only suffered the occasional death threat. A sign of a good journalist in my book!
Like everyone we meet, Andrews was full of great stories. The point of all of them being this: you can use public records to circumvent the tired broadcast practices of regurgitating wire stories, entertainment news and dueling political bobble-heads.
Judge Stringer, the focus of one of his anecdotes, was just disbarred this morning, according to a story written by Steve Andrews. Which I am looking at right now. Whoa! Things just got cosmic.
Stringer is a legend in the Tampa area. He was the first black judge in Tampa Bay and a role model to everyone growing up in the post-civil rights era. None of his colleagues ever had anything negative to say about him, said Andrews - to us, not in the article. I know, it's all very surreal.
What Thomas Stringer did, was funnel money from a debt-ridden stripper "friend" into personal bank accounts. His "friend", stripper Christy Yamanaka, made records of everything Stringer did in her favor. She recorded their phone conversations, made copies of bank records and held on to all the receipts.
Andrews' professionalism brought Yamanaka to him in the first place. At first he thought she was just some crazy person trying to discredit a legend. In the end, after she'd told her story, Andrews knew he needed the judge to talk, and talk he did once he realized what was going down.
When I look at it now, maybe the only reason broadcast can get away with holding people accountable and being hard-hitting is to include elements of the trashy. Then again, that just might be the human condition - elements of the trashy.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Vote Intelligently!
Preston Trigg is no sheriff of Rottingham. As the Director of Administration and Special Projects at the County Tax Collector's office, he's no Alan Rickman, either. The difference? It's all in the accent and facial hair.
What I'm glad Trigg mentioned, and the class spoke up for this, were a couple of clarifications about public records.
You do not have to give your name, nor an explanation, nor do you have to be a citizen of this country to get a public record. That is one of the most liberal things I've heard from Florida's government. Though I am sure conservative politicians are infuriated that the illegal aliens they hire to do housework, or yard work, can get access to the doctored books that hide their activities.
Another aphorism: follow the money. For some reason this is the first time we have heard this. Or perhaps I certainly hope it's the first time, lest I look like an ass. It is such a ridiculously sensible thing, that perhaps it was overlooked. Thankfully, Trigg made this evident with some relevant anecdotes.
He once reported on the former head of the HART bus service. He regularly used his government credit card to fill his boat with gas. Perhaps an $80 gas purchase might not seem so ludicrous to an owner of an Expedition or Hummer around last year. But this was when gas was $1/gallon, Trigg said. Not just that. The head of HART traveled to 14 cities in 3 months to "inspect the bus system."
Dipping further into a bygone era, before the time of the Tampa Bay Rays, the city of St. Petersburg was in secret talks with the Chicago White Sox to move their team here. The Sox claimed their business practices were private and Florida disagreed. Since it affected the city, these documents should be scrutinized by the public. Once again I am astounded by how liberal Florida can be. Though, the debacle behind Tropicana Field and it's nascent replacement project negate any dubious self-congratulatory behavior. At least on this matter.
So, why do people in government act so stupidly with the omnipresence of cameras and Florida's stringent public record policy? It seems so counter-intuitive. Well, the answer is not complex. We are a stupid people. We deserve the leaders we have and those we elect. They are a representation of us, the electorate. Our most pathetically sycophantic, corrupt and asinine elected official is the best of us, because at the end of the day this person was elected. And not just elected, they probably won handily.
What I'm glad Trigg mentioned, and the class spoke up for this, were a couple of clarifications about public records.
You do not have to give your name, nor an explanation, nor do you have to be a citizen of this country to get a public record. That is one of the most liberal things I've heard from Florida's government. Though I am sure conservative politicians are infuriated that the illegal aliens they hire to do housework, or yard work, can get access to the doctored books that hide their activities.
Another aphorism: follow the money. For some reason this is the first time we have heard this. Or perhaps I certainly hope it's the first time, lest I look like an ass. It is such a ridiculously sensible thing, that perhaps it was overlooked. Thankfully, Trigg made this evident with some relevant anecdotes.
He once reported on the former head of the HART bus service. He regularly used his government credit card to fill his boat with gas. Perhaps an $80 gas purchase might not seem so ludicrous to an owner of an Expedition or Hummer around last year. But this was when gas was $1/gallon, Trigg said. Not just that. The head of HART traveled to 14 cities in 3 months to "inspect the bus system."
Dipping further into a bygone era, before the time of the Tampa Bay Rays, the city of St. Petersburg was in secret talks with the Chicago White Sox to move their team here. The Sox claimed their business practices were private and Florida disagreed. Since it affected the city, these documents should be scrutinized by the public. Once again I am astounded by how liberal Florida can be. Though, the debacle behind Tropicana Field and it's nascent replacement project negate any dubious self-congratulatory behavior. At least on this matter.
So, why do people in government act so stupidly with the omnipresence of cameras and Florida's stringent public record policy? It seems so counter-intuitive. Well, the answer is not complex. We are a stupid people. We deserve the leaders we have and those we elect. They are a representation of us, the electorate. Our most pathetically sycophantic, corrupt and asinine elected official is the best of us, because at the end of the day this person was elected. And not just elected, they probably won handily.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Lobbyists, legislators and laundering
William "Windy" March knows a heck of a lot. He claimed to have hundreds of websites he regularly checks when investigating the background of politicians and lobbyists.
For example, were you aware that when Senator Mel Martinez retired from the Senate to "be with his family" that he actually mean lobbying monolith DLA Piper, who lobbied his committees 12-20 times a year while he was a legislator? He took a job with the firm immediately after "retiring" who likely quadrupled his salary. A true American hero. Defender of Hispanic Florida. Possibly a candidate for sainthood.
Only so much money can be given to a political candidate. For political money laundering, the seminal case for Windy was Mark Jimenez using his company, Future Tech, to donate thousands to Bill Clinton in the 1990's. Public records broke the case. In fact, we went through the process in class. We looked up the employees of Future Tech and the money they gave to which candidates. In this case, an overwhelming percentage was given to Bill Clinton, and many gave the maximum amount of $1,000.
Further records investigations showed that many of these donators lived in modest homes, drove old cars, and had not registered to vote. Public records got the ball rolling on this fiscal corruption case.
Another anecdote was about Jeb Bush. Apparently, he was famous for having dinners that had two costs: a $500 check for the max state donation and a $25,000 check to the Republican Party. If you gave both checks you got to play golf with George Bush Sr.
So why can all this money be given in a political race? Freedom of speech. For perhaps the first time I find myself reviling the hippy, left-wing First Amendment catch-all. Why is a political donation free speech? It is too bad one of our constitutional rights is not to live under corporate oligarchs.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Seriously confusing isn't so serious...
They have a pretty sweet racket at the County Courthouse building. Bureaucrats operate there with titles like head of the Department of Vital Statistics or the Expunging and Sealing Department. It's all quite mysterious.
"No one knows exactly what we do..." Pat Frank said. She is the Clerk of Circuit Courts for Hillsborough county and also the Comptroller. It means she takes care of money.
Racket is a squishy term. Legally it's a dishonest money-making scheme. Oh boy do they make money there. They collect $19.4 million in court fees annually, for things like closing on a home ($8-10 a page) or the ever-present $1 per page of a record provided. This is a deterrence from $0.15 that we are used to seeing. Just try not to pay those court fees. They hire private collection agencies - sounds foreboding - to make sure those fees make it to Tallahassee, then back to them.
Fortunately though, the language of their policy says they can charge up to $8.50 for every page after the first on a residential deal, and up to $1 a page for a copy of a record.
Doug Bakke, from Expunging and Sealing, shrugged that off by saying they always charge the maximum. It was nice, like an errant 'go screw yourself' shouted over traffic.
The county building has suffered a budgetary shortfall this past year - blah, blah, blah the economy. As a result, Frank said they had to eliminate 100 positions at the building. It was very algebraic. The building had a shortage of x and an abundance of y, simply remove y and bingo, there's z.
Their office does provide an valuable service though, one that is not matched anywhere else. They are the liaison between the courts and the public.
"You don't traditionally think of calling a judge to get a record," chided Frank, and would he/she even care to give you one? Probably not.
The millions of dollars that fill the Scrooge McDuck money pit at the County Courthouse is used for expensive systems that sort and manage the hundreds of thousands of pages of information they must maintain. Like Joanne Constantini's software that automatically identifies social security and credit card numbers that need to be redacted by a human operator later. These things are expensive for software engineers to create.
Not to mention the retention span that information must be held by law. Digitally speaking, computer servers are a hassle to maintain for those types of records. In the case of juveniles, that is 75 years. Even if Bakke expunges this information it leaves telltale signs that the record was there, and is now not.
At the end of the day, the raise in fees is reminiscent of an Oscar Wilde quote: "Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." New technologies need more money, and more money funds new innovation that costs even more to maintain, but streamlines the customer service side of business.
That's the other definition of a racket. A business.
"No one knows exactly what we do..." Pat Frank said. She is the Clerk of Circuit Courts for Hillsborough county and also the Comptroller. It means she takes care of money.
Racket is a squishy term. Legally it's a dishonest money-making scheme. Oh boy do they make money there. They collect $19.4 million in court fees annually, for things like closing on a home ($8-10 a page) or the ever-present $1 per page of a record provided. This is a deterrence from $0.15 that we are used to seeing. Just try not to pay those court fees. They hire private collection agencies - sounds foreboding - to make sure those fees make it to Tallahassee, then back to them.
Fortunately though, the language of their policy says they can charge up to $8.50 for every page after the first on a residential deal, and up to $1 a page for a copy of a record.
Doug Bakke, from Expunging and Sealing, shrugged that off by saying they always charge the maximum. It was nice, like an errant 'go screw yourself' shouted over traffic.
The county building has suffered a budgetary shortfall this past year - blah, blah, blah the economy. As a result, Frank said they had to eliminate 100 positions at the building. It was very algebraic. The building had a shortage of x and an abundance of y, simply remove y and bingo, there's z.
Their office does provide an valuable service though, one that is not matched anywhere else. They are the liaison between the courts and the public.
"You don't traditionally think of calling a judge to get a record," chided Frank, and would he/she even care to give you one? Probably not.
The millions of dollars that fill the Scrooge McDuck money pit at the County Courthouse is used for expensive systems that sort and manage the hundreds of thousands of pages of information they must maintain. Like Joanne Constantini's software that automatically identifies social security and credit card numbers that need to be redacted by a human operator later. These things are expensive for software engineers to create.
Not to mention the retention span that information must be held by law. Digitally speaking, computer servers are a hassle to maintain for those types of records. In the case of juveniles, that is 75 years. Even if Bakke expunges this information it leaves telltale signs that the record was there, and is now not.
At the end of the day, the raise in fees is reminiscent of an Oscar Wilde quote: "Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." New technologies need more money, and more money funds new innovation that costs even more to maintain, but streamlines the customer service side of business.
That's the other definition of a racket. A business.
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