Lubbock County turned on its online public records portal this week; however, online public access is tightly limited – meaning certain information is online but court documents are not.
“This is not going to get swept under the rug. This is still a work in progress,” said Michael Dalby, commissioner for Precinct 1.
What’s new, what’s not:
- People can sign up for an account online.
- The portal now allows people to find names, case numbers and lists of documents filed in each case.
- The public can see which criminal charges are pending against someone.
- The public can see who filed a lawsuit and who is named as a defendant.
- But the documents themselves are not yet open to the public.
Dalby, having taken office in January, took the lead this summer in getting department heads and elected officials together.
He was looking to get online access to court records restored after access was shut down in 2021. The reason – confidential information was accidentally made available online when the county switched from one computer system to another. We covered that issue in the stories listed directly below.
Previous coverage
While courthouse personnel had access to court records, the public did not – not even using the computer terminals inside the courthouse. Dalby said those terminals in the county clerk’s office and district clerk’s office have been turned back on.
“So yes, this is a huge step in the right direction,” Dalby said.
Dalby has given LubbockLights.com progress updates since mid-June.
“This runs so much deeper than just … flipping the switch,” Dalby said.
Two officials on Wednesday said the court records will be made available in stages. The first stage is to provide access through the computer terminals inside the courthouse. If that goes well – meaning no confidential information is accidentally released – the document lists in the various court dockets will get links to the actual documents.
And for now, Justice of the Peace records are completely missing from online access.
“They are still entering a lot of the data. … There are still some small pieces of this puzzle that they’re working through,” Dalby said.
Officials do not yet have a timeline as that work continues.
“We’re going to continue meeting once every couple weeks. We’re going to keep talking about potential issues,” Dalby said.
