It seemed like a good idea. Residents challenging their reassessments needed to compare their property values to their neighbor's. Rather than flipping through real estate records at the county courthouse, they could click to them on their home computers. So the county revised the site.
Users can no longer punch in a name and pull up a listing of properties owned by that person.
But they can still cull assessment data by typing in an address or parcel number. And even as some residents and community groups were lambasting Montgomery County officials for posting assessment data, the Web site was so popular that the server went down twice in one day. In Pennsylvania, state government has taken the lead in computerizing public information. Gov. Tom Ridge's Web development team has grown from five members to more than 60, said the site's webmaster, Tom Horley. In September, Government Technology magazine rated Pennsylvania's site the best in the country.