Check out the Taft Family genealogy site maybe somebody could contact his relatives for help http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~taft/ ----Original Message Follows---- From: "Mick Burdge" <[email protected]> Reply-To: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: [OHErie] Email Governor Taft to stop the 1700% price increase for birth & death certificates Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 10:41:57 -0400 IMPORTANT info for genealogists -- cost of Ohio birth & death certificates may go from $1 to $17. Your immediate action is necessary if we are to have any chance of stopping this increase. Email Governor Taft to stop the 1700% price increase for birth & death certificates. If Governor Taft signs the bill, then you should immediately contact your state senators and representatives and ask that they sponsor legislation to roll back the price increase and reinstate uncertified copies at reduced cost. I recently learned that the Ohio legislature has proposed a budget for 2002-2003 that will eliminate uncertified copies of birth and death records. If Governor Taft signs the bill as presented, you won't be able to get uncertified copies of those any more from the state or county depts of health after July 1 -- and your cost will go from $1 per uncertified copy to $17 for each certified copy -- a 1700% increase that will make the cost of genealogy research prohibitive, especially for retirees. Governor Taft has line item veto power which would enable him to veto the offending provisions of the bill -- but we must act NOW if we are to have any chance of influencing him to exercise his line item veto power. A campaign of email and phone calls should do it (letters will take to long, since Gov Taft is considering the budget now and is expecting to act on it within just a day or two). Please send Governor Taft an email -- or call his office and complain about the proposed increase. His email address and phone number are set forth below. Also below is a copy of an email I sent to the Governor this morning. You may also want to mention that many people begin researching their family histories after retirement -- but the proposed increase will make that cost prohibitive for them in particular. If just half of the subscribers to the Ohio rootsweb lists contact the Governor, we may be able to stop the increase. If you want the Governor to send you a written response, you must include your snail mail address. (I included mine.) Thanks Mick Burdge Dayton, Ohio Governors email address: [email protected] His office phone numbers: (614) 466-3555 (614) 644-0957 You can find your state senators & representatives here: http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/ My email to his office this morning: Dear Governor Taft -- I am asking that you please use your line item veto, and whatever other powers you have, to remove the proposed increase in the cost of obtaining death and birth certificates -- to be specific, please remove from the proposed budget the requirement that the public can obtain such vital records only in the form of expensive certified copies. The proposal would mean that the Ohio public would have to suffer an increase from $1 to $17 per copy. It is quite ironic that in the year 2003, while Ohio purports to celebrate its bicentennial, Ohio is about to enact legislation that makes it too expensive to research part of Ohio's history. The proposed budget will eliminate uncertified copies that so many historians, genealogists, and newspaper reporters use in researching early Ohioans. Perhaps a reasonable and modest increase to $2 for uncertified copies would be appropriate; but raising the cost from $1 to $17 is outrageous. The proposed increase will make it cost prohibitive for Ohioans to conduct family and genealogical research in this state. These records, especially death certificates, are critical to doing proper research. Death certificates contain names of parents, places of birth, and other information necessary to do proper research. I understand that the Dept of Health has stated that it needs to increase the fees for such records because it does not receive enough in fees to pay for the manpower necessary to fulfill requests. In my opinion, that is a false and pretextual position -- and attempt to continue it current unreasonable restriction on access to public records. The fact is that the dept makes it virtually impossible for researchers to access the records to conduct their own research. If the dept would make the records more accessible for citizens to do their own research, the dept could avoid the high labor costs it complains about. In order to research the records a person has to make an appointment about 2-3 weeks in advance because the dept places an unreasonable restriction on the number of researchers per day. Then the dept charges just $3 for doing research for a 10-year period. No wonder the dept fees do not pay for the labor costs involved. If the dept would make the records mor! e accessible and charge an appropriate fee for doing research, it would no have to raise the raise the cost of certificates from $1 to $17. Let me give three examples that show how the proposed increase will make research cost prohibitive. (1) Last year, I prepared a family history report as a gift for an Ohio citizen that served as a pilot in both World War II and the Korean War. His ancestors were some of the first to settle in the Cincinnati area when it was then called Columbia in the Northwest Territory. One of his ancestors is mentioned in an article in the first newspaper printed in the Northwest Territory. In the course of doing that research, I had to get copies of about 30 death certificates. Insofar as the certificates were for research purposes, I did not need them to be certified and my cost was $1 per record, a total of about $30. Under the proposed budget, I would have to pay for certified copies at $17 each -- a total of $510 -- even though I did all the research to determine the precise record that I needed. There is no way I could afford to make that kind of gift. (2) This year, I made a! similar gift to another Ohio elderly Ohio citizen who served in World War II at Normandy. I had to obtain about 27 uncertified death certificates at a cost of $27. Under the proposed budget, the cost would be $459. (3) Over the last five years, in researching my own family, I have obtained approximately 300 uncertified death records. The proposed budget would make that absolutely cost prohibitive -- $5100. Also, please note that the Mormon research facilities are no substitute for public access to Ohio public records. Moreover, the Mormon library's material does NOT include Ohio birth and death records after 1908. There is nearly a 100 year gap between the info at the Mormon library and today's records. The simple fact is this -- there is no legitimate reason why researchers should not be able to do their own research, and to pay for the actual cost of obtaining copies that their own research has identified and located. Please, please -- do not eliminate uncertified copies of vital records -- and do not allow the cost of vital records to increase to $17 each. Such an increase will put an end to family and genealogical research in this state. Thanks for listening -- and I hope to read in the newspaper that you have vetoed such an increase. Michael J. Burdge ==== OHERIE Mailing List ==== Listowner Email is [email protected] or [email protected] To search this list go to http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl and enter OHERIE for the list name. _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail