Thursday, June 28, 2012

Blame it on Jindal's budget cuts...nice

Dear Mr. Schedler,

I am an independent journalist and blogger from New Orleans who focuses on corruption within city government.  I use the SOS database on a regular basis to help me do my work and I would like to point out a very annoying limitation of the search engine.  One can not perform searches by physical address.  I don't understand why this search field is not provided as the corporations are required to list the physical addresses of the entities with your office.  It can't be a technical issue as it is simply an added search field.

I would like to request that you please add this function to the database so as to better serve the public and public interests.  Thank you for your consideration.

Jason Berry
The American Zombie


Mr. Berry,

As you may know, our agency’s budget has been greatly cut, and accordingly, we do not have funds that we can appropriate to accommodate this request. We do offer queries in the form of an Excel spreadsheet that can include this information. Please contact the Commercial Division at 225.925.4704 for further assistance.

Regards,

Brandee Patrick


Brandee Patrick
Public Information Officer
Secretary of State Tom Schedler
www.sos.la.gov

Thank everyone who contacted them.  Aggravating response, though.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

whats his email address? id like to request the functionality as well.

the crazy thing is, they must have a staff programmer who maintains their systems. why wouldnt s/he be able to make an improvement to a lacking system? why does it require special funds?

id like to ask him that.

Jason Brad Berry said...

The address to respond is at the bottom or her letter.

Anonymous said...

i dont see an email address there.

but i did now see it in your other post:

admin@sos.la.gov

Anonymous said...

Feel privileged Jason as I received no response to my e-mail. I additionally asked the SOS to post all amendments filed with the profit and non-profits corporations so there can be no hidden new officers or owners.

Does that cost more money? I don't think so.Personally, I believe the department "covers" for the La.Legis and by filing the amendments the dept. would blow a lot of hidden politicos' info and SOS dept. would receive less funding( A form of "Playing Along to Get Along").

Jason, when you call Patrick for intro to their BS Excel spreadsheet ask him why they can't post updated amendments cause surely that does not cost more money to implement.

Anonymous said...

BULL SHIT FROM THE PR MORON. Here is what the SOS Commercial Administrator sent me. Budget cut are pure BS. I even called over there and someone in their IT Department said it could be done if authorized by Tom Schedler. They didn't need an outside contractor to write this simple code as it could be done in-house for at no cost at all.

Here is another person's response to me when I sent an email in. I also called the IT department.

Dear Ms. XXXXXXXX

Thank you for your suggestion regarding the search database feature on our website.

I will pass your suggestion on to our IT staff for review.

Please contact me if I can be of further assistance.

Mandy Harlan
Commercial Assistant Administrator
Louisiana Secretary of State's Office
8585 Archives Avenue
Baton Rouge, LA 70809
225-922-2896

Anonymous said...

ok listen up zombies (Army of Z?) - here are all the email addies you should direct your requests to. currently they are saying it's too hard a feature, or that it puts companies at risk for "identity theft", but those points are easy to negate. below is a good template if youd like to use it.

-----------------

tom.schedler@sos.louisiana.gov
aharlan@sos.louisiana.gov
kyle.ardoin@sos.louisiana.gov
admin@sos.la.gov


Dear Secretary of Stte,

I'd like to request you inprove the online corporate database search, adding the ability to search for corporate entities by address.

Being able to search by address is an essential task for news & citizen investigation into fraudulent non-profits and other "paper tigers". The public has been 100% responsible for unmasking several criminal dealings of this nature in the New Orleans metro. Please see recent news regarding Greg Meffert, Ray Nagin, and Frank Fradella -- these stories were broken by journalists & citizens, reviewing our public records with a keen eye.

The data returned by the corporate database searches are already public. In no way would the SOS expose additional data or risk by including more useful search criteria on the same returned data -- it's simply an easier way to find already public records.

Please have your staff add this entry-level search feature.


Sincerely,
xxx

Anonymous said...

What's the latest we can't let this die. Where are the other bloggers on this important topic.