Preston Trigg, Hillsborough County Tax Collector

Today we were joined by Preston Trigg of the Hillsborough County Tax Collector’s office. Trigg is the Director of Administration and Special Projects and took some time out of his busy schedule to go over some of the different requests he gets on a daily basis. He works closely with Doug Belden and helps with not only the various media requests but the tax paying public’s requests as well.

Some of the important facts he shared with us is that anyone can get a public record and they don’t have to give their name, a reason, or put the request in writing. While we have heard that from some of the other speakers we have had what we have not heard is that it might be a good idea to put our requests in writing. Trigg spoke from experience as he once was a reporter himself for the Tampa Tribune and used to make his requests in writing. The benefits of making your requests in writing is that it helps prove that you made a request in the first place and assists in mitigating errors in the request. When talking about accessing public records the subject of charges seems to come up a lot and he addressed that as well. He stated that the law allows extra charges for a large volume of records or a record requiring computer or programming time. After discussing the charges, we went over what types of documents we have the right to receive and the ones we don’t. Every document, email, tape recording and other government records start out as a public record that we have the right to inspect. That being said there are many exceptions, such as school records, (exam scores) items in that are in the process of an investigation, private emails, and most records involving juvenile records to name a few. Along with all of the knowledge he has gathered from his days in the tax collectors office he also shared some of the tricks he picked up as a reporter. He stated that main thing that all reporters should remember is to follow the money because that will usually lead you to a good story. The next bit of advice he picked up was from a former editor and that was to always check the facts because you never know who you can trust.

In closing this visit was one of the most helpful in getting me prepared to do a profile paper in the coming weeks. To this point we have had the pleasure to meet with many different people to prepare for our profile pieces but this one will set the wheels in motion. Both his experience and knowledge lead me to believe that if we follow the methods that he shared with us today we should all be successful.