Land records and property tax assessor searches for Jefferson County Wisconsin have been added to our Wisconsin property tax assessor page at the link below.

Wisconsin Land & Property Records.

The Lake County California Tax Assessor / Recorder property search has been added to Skipease.com.

You can access the Lake County Assessor search along with other county assessor searches for the state of California at the link below.

California Tax Assessor Searches.

The US Department of Justice has gathered all of the sex offender public records for all 50 states and put it in one centralized search. The National Sex Offender Public Registry web site allows users to lookup sex offender public records by state search; name search; zip code search; county search; city & town search or national search.

You can access the National Sex Offender Public Registry @ National Sex Offender Public Registry.

The Center for Public Integrity has a public database online, where users can find out which financial and business interests have ties to state politicians.

From the site –

State legislators directly influence the lives of all Americans. The 7,400 lawmakers in state capitals across the country passed close to 40,000 laws in 2005 alone and spent an estimated $1.3 trillion in taxpayer money in the same year. Ever wonder what outside financial interests legislators making these decisions might possess? Find out more about the potential for conflict of interest and view legislators’ actual disclosure filings by selecting a state.

The site is a great resource for everyday citizens as well as campaign / election researchers.

You can search the database @ Our Private Legislators.

The Virtual Chase web site has republished an introductory primer on doing public record searches and research online.

You can read this handy introduction to public record research @ The Art of Public Records Research.

The Iowa State Patrol have taken their crash reports and put them online. The reports are free to search for anyone with an internet connection. You can search the crash reports by date, type or county.

You can access the Iowa State Patrol crash reports database @ Iowa State Crash Reports.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has put its database of meth offenders online and made it freely searchable for the general public. You can search the Tennessee Meth Offender Registry by name or county.

You can access the online meth offender database @ Tennessee Meth Offender Database.

Member newspapers of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association now publish public record notices from their respective newspapers on a web site that is free to use by the general public.

To view the published public notices, follow the WNA News site link and click on the menu option for “Public Notice Web Site” at WNA News.

The new FirstGov search engine powered by Vivisimo and Microsoft has been launched 3 months ahead of schedule. The new search engine for the US Federal Government now indexes over 40 million pages compared to 8 million pages for the previous search site. The FirstGov search engine uses Vivisimo’s clustering technology to cluster similar results for easier searching and uses Microsoft search technology to retrieve results.

You can try out the new FirstGov search engine at FirstGovSearch.

Bill Lueders from The Capital Times in Madison, WI has written an excellent article with 10 tips for requesting open records and public records from government agencies. The article specifically addresses open record and public record requests in the state of Wisconsin. However, the tips can be generalized for requesting open and public records in almost any state, although public record laws will vary from state to state and county to county. The main things to remember when requesting open and public records is don’t be shy when requesting public records and don’t be afraid to ask questions of government record keepers.

You can read the article @ Tips for using open records law