In a year of budget cuts, DPS is whining about the cost of publishing the Sex Offender Registry. According to one of their spokesmen, eliminating the registry could save $3 million a year.
The Open Records Project published the first Internet Sex Offender Registry in the country in 1998. We had to fight a legal battle with DPS to get the information. Our volunteers periodically uploaded the data to our server and maintained the database. We designed special software to handle the load which peaked at 400 searches a second in late 1999.
There are now 35 states that publish registries. The Open Records Project no longer publishes the data but links to the state sites.
If the DPS wimps out, The Open Records Project volunteers will once again publish the Sex Offender Registry. If it costs them $3 million a year to do, there must be a large pit in Austin that is full of money.