Your address going back on Web site

Attention, nosy people: You can again look up somebody's address on Salt Lake County Web pages with minimum fuss.

When she was Salt Lake County recorder, Nancy Workman (now the county mayor) ruffled a few feathers by putting statistics like property ownership, taxes and other records on the Internet. That made things easier to access, such as the value of your home. But some complained that although the records were legally public, snoopers would too easily be able to look up personal information.

Workman's successor Gary Ott continued the practice until last summer. That was when a state law went into effect that personal information on "at-risk" government employees — police officers, judges, district attorneys, state attorneys, corrections officers and others who dealt with criminal types that might want to come after them — should be made unavailable, or at least a lot harder to get.

Ott thought the county ought to just get rid of it for everybody.

"Mainly it was just, if someone came in, we're not pushing on them where John Doe lives," Ott said.

He got rid of addresses on tax records generally. Other offices, such as the assessor, did the same. If you really wanted to find out where somebody lived you could, but it certainly would be harder to do.

Some, though, including former County Commissioner Brent Overson, who does business in real estate, didn't like the restriction. They challenged Ott's practice and ultimately went to the County Council, which told Ott to put the addresses back on except for those at-risk people who requested they be removed.

"I don't think there will be hordes of people applying, but there will be some," he said.

More than half of the people in the state's at-risk categories live in Salt Lake County and are directly affected by Ott's decisions.

As of Feb. 16, your address will be back online. And no, if you're not an at-risk person as defined in the statute, you can't get it removed. It's there to stay, for better or for worse.

"It's something that I just thought we ought to let people know about," Ott said.

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E-mail: aedwards@desnews.com