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Yours for the Hacking

The county�s court system has spent $36 million on a revolutionary new database, but when programmers warned it was vulnerable, they�re the ones who got deleted

A A A Comments (1) By Kirk Nielsen Thursday, Nov 4 2004

Court-related technology spending also remains a county responsibility. The amendment authorizes clerks to tack on a new four-dollar filing fee for documents relating to property ownership. The state takes half the fee, the county receives ten cents of it, and Ruvin's office keeps the remaining $1.90 for technology projects. This year the fees will bring some four million dollars to the clerk's office. But even with another two million more provided by the county commission, there will not be enough to expand SPIRIT into misdemeanor criminal cases. "I'm going to have to find another source of funding for the aggressive plan I had to move technologies forward," Ruvin says. "If I could sell SPIRIT to twenty jurisdictions, I'd have five million dollars for technology."

Ultimately the SPIRIT project's direction will be determined by a panel of judges and county administrators known as the Executive Policy Committee. "Every major decision goes to them," Ruvin says. But the SPIRIT whistleblowers and other skeptics say the committee, which meets twice per year, functions as little more than a rubber stamp on Ruvin's agenda.

ISTOCKPHOTO.COM

Ex-SPIRIT programmers (clockwise from upper left): Johnny Hoben, Juan Galego, Masood Hussaini, Randy Feigenbaum, and Byron Jones

Jonathan Postal

Ex-SPIRIT programmers (clockwise from upper left): Johnny Hoben, Juan Galego, Masood Hussaini, Randy Feigenbaum, and Byron Jones

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