A resolution of the County of Allegheny, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, urging the General Assembly and Governor to enact Senate Bill 372, an Act amending Title 42 (Judiciary and Judicial Procedure) of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, further providing for form of permanent recordation and for copies of destroyed records, laid on the table by the Senate on April 10, 2013, with all deliberate speed.
Whereas, pursuant to 42 Pa.C.S.A. §§4323 and 4324, Allegheny and other Counties within the Commonwealth must retain paper records of judicial proceedings unless they are first converted to other analog formats (e.g. microfiche, microfilm, video tape or magnetic tape) for retention purposes; and
Whereas, the conversion of paper records to the analog formats required by §§4323 and 4324 is a comparatively labor intensive process, requiring the use of aging technology that is increasingly expensive to maintain; and
Whereas, while documents reduced to some of the authorized analog formats require less storage space than paper documents, they also require significantly more storage space than digitally stored documents; and
Whereas, Allegheny County currently maintains document storage space in multiple locations: the County Courthouse, a warehouse within the City of Pittsburgh, a dedicated storage facility in Clarion County, and at space arranged through a private document storage company; and
Whereas, the County's current document storage arrangements require more space than would be required for digitally stored documents, and if the retention of digital documents were to be permitted, some portion of this storage space could be dedicated to other purposes or rendered unnecessary; and
Whereas, while the storage space currently occupied by the County's court records may not be reduced immediately due to the time necessary to convert existing analog records to digital records, the conversion would allow the Department of Court Records to avoid the need for renting additional storage space and, as a result, it is currently estimated that the annual savings to the Department would be significant in relation to the Department's overall storage costs; and
Whereas, although there will be comparatively short term administrative costs for converting to digital document retention, it is estimated that these short term costs would be offset by the long term space and equipment maintenance savings occasioned by the conversion; and
Whereas, converting to digital document storage would greatly enhance the ability of the County to render public documents accessible to the County's residents; and
Whereas, documents converted to digital formats could be retained in multiple locations while still maintaining significant space savings for the County, thus enabling the County to retain documents even in the event of any catastrophic event at one storage location; and
Whereas, it is accordingly the judgment of Council that enabling the retention of documents converted to digital storage media would be in the best interests of the County and its residents.
The Council of County of Allegheny hereby resolves as follows:
Section 1.
The Council of the County of Allegheny, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, hereby urges the General Assembly and Governor to enact Senate Bill 372, an Act amending Title 42 (Judiciary and Judicial Procedure) of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, further providing for form of permanent recordation and for copies of destroyed records, laid on the table by the Senate on April 10, 2013, with all deliberate speed.
Section 2.
Upon final approval of this Resolution, the Chief Clerk shall forward copies to the Allegheny County delegations to the Pennsylvania House and Senate, as well as the Office of the Governor.
Section 3. Severability. If any provision of this Resolution shall be determined to be unlawful, invalid, void or unenforceable, then that provision shall be considered severable from the remaining provisions of this Resolution which shall be in full force and effect.
Section 4. Repealer. Any resolution or ordinance or part thereof conflicting with the provisions of this Resolution is hereby repealed so far as the same affects this Resolution.
PRIMARY SPONSOR: Council Member Finnerty
CO-SPONSORS: Vice President Futules, Council Members Macey, Martoni, Means, Palmiere, and Rea