We're with Nobody

by Alan Huffman

  One regret I have through my years of doing research is that I didn’t collect all of the instruction sheets that most every clerk’s office in the country posts next to each public access computer. No two are exactly alike and each can be as difficult to decipher and as frustrating as a Greek tragedy written in Chinese on the back of a postage stamp.

  One of the most confusing and maddening examples was a three-columned sheet filled with an alphabet soup of the codes required to use the computer. At first glance it seemed simple enough. If I’m looking for this . . . just enter this code. Easy! Want to look for tax liens on a piece of property? “The screens that will assist you in this search are VTAS, RXPN, RXPS, or RXDT,” reads the sheet. Once I entered one code, more information was required, such as a property parcel number, which more often than not I didn’t have. In the rare instance that I did, there was an entire substratum of information that required even more codes. If I managed to successfully drill down into that data, I’d have better prayed that I didn’t have to go back because the information I just accessed would evaporate in the blink of a computer screen and I’d have to start the whole process over again. There was little hope of success in this endeavor and few options but to ask the clerk for help. On her fourth trip over, she looked at the terminal and proceeded to tell me that I was operating in the wrong “session.”

  “Session?” I asked. “What does that even mean?”

  She flipped over the instruction sheet and pointed to a sentence that read, “You may view a document at any time, but you must be using the ‘A’ session and you must be on the RXEN screen.”

  I just looked at her and then back at the computer. I had absolutely no clue what in the hell she was talking about. Session? How would I know I’m in the wrong session? How did I get in this session? How many sessions are there? What exactly is a session? Forget it. I don’t even care. The whole point of the public access computer had been negated. In the end she was forced to move me from my chair and find the information I sought while I peered over her shoulder.

  If I were stranded on a deserted island, one of the things I would most like to have is a public access computer and an instruction sheet. It would keep me occupied for years.

  Walking into a tax assessor’s office in Minnesota one afternoon, I found Alan sitting in front of a computer nearly in tears. It wears on you. The entire system, from filling out forms to paying fees to arguing with rabid government workers, will beat you down, tempt you to just leave empty-handed, force you never to return. But Alan and I do return. We’ve learned to endure it, to outlast them. To cannibalize a line by Steve Martin from the movie Planes, Trains & Automobiles: “I could tolerate any insurance seminar. For days I could sit there and listen to them go on and on with a big smile on my face. They’d say, ‘How can you stand it?’ ” I’d say, ’Cause I’ve been to courthouses and government offices from Florida to Oregon. I can stand anything. The tactics used to frighten you away or deny your right to review public documents are seemingly endless. One common device is to try to scare you with fees. To this day, the ultimate fee-diversion effort was one that came from an Oregon state agency that attempted to charge an estimated $200,000 for a list of fairly easy-to-compile information.

  “The agency is, of course, willing to do this,” read the e-mail from its communications office. Of course it is. So I’m thinking, “OK, I can drop them a check in the mail for nearly a quarter million dollars or buy, say, a new house with no mortgage, or perhaps join a feed-the-hungry program and send a dollar a day to a starving kid for the next 547.95 years.” Tough choices for sure.

  The kicker to all this was the last line of the message, which read, “Additionally, can you please tell me how you intend to use these materials?”

  My reply very simply pointed out that I had requested similar information in other states and knew it should be a fairly straightforward process with costs that are minimal at best. I appreciated their interest in my intended use of this information, I stated, but since these are public records, that information is not required.

  Ten days later, after a few more e-mails and counter-e-mails, I received the information for which I had asked. And the total cost? Nothing. Zero. No charge. Free.

  But for every scare tactic or surly jerk in a records office there’s often a counterbalance, a supremely nice and helpful person, like the librarian in the special collections section of the University of Utah library. My search for an obscure masters thesis written some twenty-five years earlier by a candidate now running for Congress led me to the librarian, who combed through library records until he found what I was looking for. And while it was being copied, he asked me to sit and talk to him about politics, about voter apathy and about his hopes for the country. Later, I received an e-mail from him that read, “It was really good to meet you. I hope your visit to the University of Utah’s library was productive. I enjoyed our conversation. Have a good summer and let me know if you need anything from the library here.”

  Such niceties, however, are rare and are certainly nowhere to be found at the government office in Missouri. For three days, an odd battle has continued between us and our disgruntled troll. But we are not to be defeated. Try as she might, she has been unable to throw up enough barriers to stop us from our intended mission. She has been unable to convince her supervisor to halt our request for the campaign finance reports we seek. And though the retrieval process has been slow, she is, piece by piece, bringing out the documents we’ve requested. Watching a hostile civil servant wheeling a dolly stacked with paper is, in a strange way, a rewarding moment.

  “Do you think she hates us?” Alan asks.

  “Pretty sure,” I say. “I mean, look at her.”

  After three consecutive days of us, she no longer walks with the air of defiance we had witnessed that first afternoon. She only speaks when we have a question. She looks tired, and part of me feels bad that she has lost a battle she was so confident she would win. It’s not easy being a government employee. For the most part, the work is tedious and the pay is low. And when two smart-assed strangers walk in and ruin half your week, the job likely seems that much harder.

  For a moment I wonder what her life must be like beyond her bureaucratic day job. Does she have a family, and do they find her as troublesome as we do? Does she gripe about the amount of laundry she has to wash, screaming at her children, “I’d have to have a dolly to haul all those clothes to that washing machine!” But then, I think, maybe she’s the exact opposite when she’s at home. Maybe she’s the sweetest, most caring and giving woman in her neighborhood. Maybe people come from miles around just to be in her presence and absorb some of her at-home charm.

  “I kind of feel sorry for her,” I tell Alan.

  “Not me,” he snaps back, without looking up from his work.

  “Yeah, me either.”

  It’s about thirty minutes to closing when she walks up and tells us that she’ll be leaving soon. She assumes since her day is ending, ours is too. For three days we’ve gone through the reports we need to see and she’s likely breathing a little easier because she believes we’ll now be leaving for good. She flippantly asks if there will be anything else.

  “Just one more thing,” says Alan as he slams a heavy stack of reports onto the end of the table in front of her and leans back in his chair. “We’re going to need copies of all this. Could ya do that for us?”

  Chapter 9

  Alan

  Over the years, Michael and I have watched with quiet dismay as a host of transcontinental government employees stand in the way of private citizens seeking copies of public documents. Particularly when it’s late in the campaign season, after we’ve been dealing with bureaucratic hurdles all summer long, we sometimes feel an urge to intervene—to tell people that no matter what they may hear from the clerk who steadfastly refuses to rise from her homey, personal-photo-infested desk, no one can deny them public records.

  The desire to assist others who ar
e being rebuffed by imperious minor authority figures developed in me early on, when, as a sixth grader armed with a small spiral notebook known on the playground as “Alan’s little black book,” I compiled a detailed, running indictment of our teacher, a churlish sociopath. I was inspired to document her transgressions because the other children were helpless to do much other than cry or fantasize about her being kidnapped by aliens and transported to another universe aboard a flying saucer. I needed a more attractive, actionable response.

  The little black book was wildly successful as a social networking tool. It was, essentially, a titillating, password-protected blog. Empowered by my role as secret documentarian, I eventually went public with the teacher’s most damnable act—the violent swinging, by the arm, of a boy with a severe learning disability. In that case I was moved to act even before the episode made its way into the record.

  Following the teacher’s shocking display of abuse, as my classmates sat mute at their desks and the targeted boy stared out the window, rubbing his arm, I briefly commiserated with my friend Melanie, who shared my budding sense of impropriety, and the two of us rose from our desks and walked silently to the principal’s office, where we delivered the news. The principal listened to our account without a word, and then directed us back to the classroom. A few minutes later she arrived in class and sternly addressed the children, expressing her solidarity with the teacher and chastising us for not being patient with her mood swings, which she said were the result of fluctuations related to “goiter.” During this, the teacher sat smugly behind her desk, fiddling with her bra strap under her dress. Authority.

  In a sense, Melanie and I had failed, though it’s worth noting that the teacher never bothered the slow boy again, nor did we, the two rapscallions, suffer any repercussions. Perhaps it was assumed that while we had been temporarily defused, we still posed something of a threat; we might, after all, tattle to our parents. (We didn’t.)

  Soon after that, I lost my little black book, the memory of which haunts me to this day. In its era, losing the little black book was the equivalent of misplacing a red-hot opposition research report in a public place. I searched for weeks—on the playground; in the vicinity of the dreaded maypole (where it could have flown from my pocket during the awkward physical movements required by the garish, confusing spectacle); on the verges of the soccer field; in my secret box in the garage; along the creek where I played. It never resurfaced.

  Though my program to undermine our classroom’s vexing, publicly sponsored ogre through documentation ultimately failed, the concept clearly held promise, and it earned the admiration of my peers while conferring on them a much-needed sense of empowerment. Today, as an adult oppo guy, I feel the same self-righteous zeal when I see citizens being cowed by public employees whose personal power is derived from the mere presence of a countertop.

  Occasionally, out of a mixture of pity, camaraderie and mischief, Michael and I have offered unsolicited private instructions to those we’ve observed in such situations. At some point, likely as we were driving from one stone-faced records edifice to another, it occurred to us that we could provide a handy guide for dislodging impervious government employees, thereby freeing the exchange of telling documentation. Ideally, we would provide our pointers on a laminated sheet that would be required by law to be posted in every records repository across the land. Because the world is not ideal, we offer them here.

  Whomever you come up against, it’s important to recognize that there are special considerations for each city and each region. Difficult clerks may seem interchangeable, but in fact they are site-specific, bringing their own regional culture and the vagaries of personal identity to the counter. Obviously, the hope is that you will arrive at that counter or window, state your request, and receive your documents without controversy. To increase the chances of that happening, we advise engaging them on their own terms, at least at the outset. It may be useful to talk country in rural areas, or no-nonsense in Chicago, or to present yourself as a charming curiosity, which, in our case, may mean laying on the Southern charm in Idaho. It is also sometimes useful to flirt with the person, whether male or female, depending on your gut feeling. Some of the tactics summarized below require practice, and are advisable only for the advanced practitioner, but even a novice can master most of them quickly.

  1. Arrive at the records repository first thing in the morning, when clerical enthusiasm is highest; or just before or after lunch; or just before closing time, when there is a greater sense of clerical urgency.

  The utility of the time threat was revealed to me during a research project in California, where a lunchtime stroll through the lovely redwoods of the Muir Woods park resulted in my getting lost, after which I was late arriving at the county’s government center, as the clock was approaching 5:00 PM. I was initially embarrassed to be making a significant records request when everyone was preparing to go home, but lo and behold, the records clerk, after an introductory sigh, proceeded to manically gather and copy the majority of the documents in record time. There is nothing like the approach of quitting time to inspire a clock puncher to get the job done. He didn’t even take the time to ask me whom I was with.

  The next day I arrived promptly at 8:00 AM to complete my task. It was a beautiful morning, with shafts of sunlight falling through the arched skylights of the stunning Frank Lloyd Wright–designed county building, and as I approached the counter, a different clerk greeted me, fresh as a flower. “What a beautiful building,” I said, and she agreed. Then I explained my purpose and slid my records request across the counter. She smiled and went to work.

  In summary: The clock can be your friend.

  2. Be nice, but confident. If you’re in a locale where people still maintain a sense of decorum, you may want to start off with something like, “Hello, my name’s Eric [or Erica]. Could you tell me how to go about finding the tax history of this piece of property? Is that something I can do on my own?” If you’re someplace where being polite is considered antiquated and a sign of weakness, cut to the chase: “I need the tax history for a piece of property and all I have is the owner’s name. Think you can help?”

  Michael and I have observed that rambling, uncertain citizens with unclear needs are among the chief vexations of government employees consigned to dealing with the public. While posing as one can be useful as a last-ditch diversionary tactic, it’s never good to start out that way. Everyone, including the others waiting in line, will be annoyed when someone approaches the counter and announces, tentatively, “I’m not sure exactly what I’m looking for. I was thinking—last night, while watching Dancing with the Stars?—that I couldn’t remember if my mother’s sister-in-law, an older lady who lives in the . . . oh, what’s the name of that assisted living place out on the bypass, the one with the fountain out front? I’m having a senior moment myself, ha ha ha . . .”

  You do not want to be that guy. Everything that takes place in proximity to him is going to be tedious and counterproductive. Inexperience, even feigned ignorance, can be a plus, but even then it’s important to remain focused.

  3.Assume the best, starting out. Smile. Scientists have found that approximately 25 percent of the human population is comprised of assholes; 25 percent, idiots; 25 percent, idiotic assholes; and 25 percent, people who are smart or nice or both. The breakdown is easily observed on any interstate highway. At the outset, assume that clerks are part of the latter group until proven otherwise, and make clear that you are, too. Even if they reveal themselves to be idiotic assholes and you have to fall back on verbal pepper spray, do not make the mistake of assuming a kindred role as a petty nuisance. It will only make things harder, and the people behind you in line will hate you, too. This doesn’t mean you can’t be forceful (see item number 6, below).

  4. Incentivize. Show gratitude for any help the employee provides. Try to make the process work efficiently so that everyone can move on to other things. Don’t get too friendly, though, lest you o
pen the door for them to inquire about your reasons for doing the research, at which point your reticence may spoil the pleasant atmosphere you’ve just created. Also, they may know the person.

  Not all on-the-ground records research takes place in public offices; sometimes it’s necessary to inquire at private businesses—always a tricky wicket, in that they are not subject to full public disclosure and have the right to refuse. Still, most of the same rules of interpersonal dynamics apply.

  I was once doing research in a newspaper library, a place that is rarely open to the public, but into which I had finagled entry by using the vernacular language of a newspaper reporter—throwing out words like “clip files,” “the morgue” (as newspaper archives are known, in-house), etc. The lion’s share of archived news stories are available online, through subscription services or at newspaper websites, but doing a thorough job sometimes requires going further back in time or through the archives of smaller newspapers than are available through those mechanisms. Such was the case in the small town in South Carolina where I entered the newspaper archives (far preferable to a local library, which may not index its clips) by behaving as a reporter, which had the unintended side effect of opening me to chitchat with actual staff writers, who are by nature and profession a curious bunch. Where did I work? Where had I worked? What was I looking for and why? I was hit with a barrage of meaningful and logical questions, delivered amicably by a perceived peer.