Tax Collector

On Tuesday the class took a trip back downtown to the County Center. It was on the 14th floor where we had a lecture session and a presentation given to us by Preston Trigg, the Director of Administration for the Hillsborough County Tax Collector. Some of this presentation, particularly the first part, was review. Trigg started out by talking about what a public record is, who can get one, and how you go about getting one. One interesting statement he made during this part came when he was talking about the fees you sometimes have to pay when trying to obtain a public record. Trigg said that the Tax Collector’s Office does not charge people for records, or copies of records. He said that he felt like we should not have to pay for them because we already have with our tax dollars. He added to that by saying that it is our information that we have paid for, therefore we should not have to pay for it again.
Trigg talked about what a particular agency must do if they refuse to provide you with a public record. He said that not only do they have to give a reason for their refusal, they must cite the exemption. He listed off some common exemptions such as: school records, propriety records, investigatory materials when the investigation is in process, autopsy photographs, most records involving juveniles, and private e-mails that do not have anything to do with public business.
Trigg described the Tax Collector by comparing themselves to a bank. He said that basically what the Tax Collector does is take a bunch of money from the tax payers and divvy it out. He did add that they do not set the tax rate, they just do the collecting. The job of setting the tax rate belongs to the property appraiser, Trigg said.
I thought this trip was solid because it gave us some new information but also was a good review session of some of the important things we have gone over this semester.