I read in the Glen Rose Reporter newspaper from week of February 10, 2010 that, at the Republican Meet the Candidates night, Mike Ford said

As a commissioner, Ford said he has pushed for the use of technology to make the county more efficient. He favors posting records in digital form to comply with the state's Open Records Act and to save time and money.

I had heard informally that Ford said also that he was working on websites, possibly without mentioning that there is already a website for Somervell County that was and has been out of compliance with the law.  (Somervell County did fix their website to bring into compliance with the law within 24 hours after we pointed it out.)

Why do I have a beef with this? Because Mike Ford, more than any other commissioner, ought to have known better than to completely drop the ball on what he not only is promising to do but what he failed to do. For example, he is the one that is leading, for the commissioners, the Technology Committee (which is comprised of the department heads of the county, to include Mark Woolverton). If he knew that he needed to comply with the Texas Open Meetings and Public Records laws, why didn't he make sure months ago this was happening with the existing website? (It's also not happening on the new website)

Let's break this down.

Mike Ford spoke about this at the commissioners court meeting on September 14, 2009 (full audio at this link)

Item 26- CIRA website. Rec from technology committee. Move website to the TAC/CIRA folks. Training for evrey department, each department their own changes, not loaded in one department to do it. (Ford) does not cost anything. Package 1-website free, some emails available. User-friendly site. About indemnifying the county.

I went back and clipped just his part to listen to, rough transcript.

Mike-This comes as a recommendation from the technology committee. Handout, update to the contract from CIRA. Part 1 CIRA Services- move our website to the TAC/CIRA folks and let them not actually maintain, well they'll maintain it but we move the website to their services. We will have a training for every department so that eventually what we will be doing and it will happen fairly quickly.  Each department will be able to input  their own changes, their own information, whatever they want to do and that way it's not all loaded on one person or one department to do that.  So each of us will have persons in our department that will be trained specifically on how to do that locally.  We think that's by far the best way for this to happen. It does not cost us anything. What we're talking about is that first package, package one.  Free, There are 30 emails available and some of those are in use by law enforcement . We're not actually looking at changing our email structure here because (with CIRA) the addresses are so long and confusing that it's kind of difficult.  If we go with that package one it will cost us nothing and we feel like it will be a much more useful and friendly site.  It will take a bit of time to get everybody trained and get things switched over but we're prepared and the people in Austin are prepared today to begin that process as soon as we okay this.... recommendation from the technology committee and I would make a motion on behalf of them that we approve package one... (Ron Hankins talks about indemnity)

Made me wonder what the website actually is, since the emails, as Mr Ford said, would be cumbersome. Here is the CIRA website, which has an announcement on it that it's up and available as of 1/5/2010. Except it's not.(Today is February 11 2010)

Look at the name of the domain, which is apparently a subdomain - www.co.somervell.tx.us/ips/cms/events.html ... VERSUS glenrose.org . Which looks easier to YOU? No wonder Mr Ford said they weren't going to use the emails from the new domain.

And heh, the notice there says that Somervell County releases a new and more user friendly website. Really? Why is that? A little comparison

Here's the front page of the CIRA website (My screen shot or look directly at the link)

and here's the front page of the glenrose.org website. (My screen shot or look directly at the link)

Menus are pretty much the same on both webpages.

More comparison.