Preston Trigg

The other day we had received a visit from Preston Trigg. He's the Director of Administration and Special Projects for the Hillsborough County Tax Collector. It was nice to have someone with a lot of experience in different fields. He used to be an editor and writer with newspapers in both North Carolina and Florida.



Preston Trigg gave us a lot of new information and restated a lot of information previously given by other presenters. He like many others talked about the wealth of public records out there. He spoke about the Official Records Index, which is also known as the OR index. He said that this would soon become our best friend for both our projects and our careers as reporters.



http://pubrec3.hillsclerk.com/oncore/Search.aspx



You can get plenty of information through the website posted like marriages, divorces, mortgages, and even law suits. Trigg had some interesting quotes for us, even one as far back as this one from Thomas Jefferson.



“The Biggest tread to people is government secrecy.”



I totally agree with Mr. Trigg when he talks about government openness and transparency. If we don't have an open government, the politicians don't have any accountability, or nobody to answer to. This will only lead to further corruption and shady business deals in order to receive more campaign dollars. Try to imagine the Politicians not having to answer to anyone. The average person doesn't trust a politician as it is, and that's with an open government.



Preston Trigg gave us an interesting website called:

http://hillstax.org/



The website above is ran by Trigg's office, and allows a person to search for information on individuals like paid taxes, property worth, and simply where their property is located. Knowing this can help when trying to investigate some stories. I like this website because it's easier to navigate through than most of the other state websites that seem to give you the run-around.



Trigg emphasized the importance of checking properties for our project. He even gave us some quick pointers on what politicians do in order to hide from these public record files. For instance, how some put property under other relatives names or theirs spouses name to hide.



He also spoke about Google-Earthing the property found. He said that it might not give us a great deal of information but at least we'll know what we're dealing with. You never know, it could lead to something.



Mr. Trigg did a great job presenting us with some facts that will without a doubt help us in the long run. Until next class visit, I will talk to you all later.