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Lincoln County agrees to split cost of court records scanning with state
Summary
After a presentation from court administrators, the commission approved a motion for Lincoln County to pay half the cost of scanning long‑term court records so files can be transferred to state servers and removed from vulnerable storage at the old courthouse.
Carl Thomas, court administrator for Lincoln and Minnihaha counties, told the Lincoln County Commission on March 3 that roughly the equivalent of 330 standard records boxes remain stored in the basement of the old courthouse and asked the county to pay half the cost to scan those files.
Thomas described a vendor proposal from Active Data Systems and said the firm is experienced with fragile historical records and could scan cases to searchable PDF that would be transferred to state court servers. “Active Data Systems scans to PDF. We transfer it to a state server on a server drive that is accessible to court staff,” Thomas said during his presentation.
Thomas and court staff explained that state retention rules require some case types to be kept permanently while others may be eligible for eventual destruction. He said the total scanning cost in the proposal works out to about $100,000 and that state court administration had identified roughly $50,000 to cover half of the expense; the court requested that the county cover the remaining half.
During public comment, Canton resident Chad Skylles asked why the county stores state court records; Thomas and others responded that state statutes make court facilities a county responsibility. Fair resident Linda Montgomery expressed concern that original paper records would be shredded after digitization, saying, “It’s very concerning to me that we are shredding the documents afterwards.” The presenter and county staff cited state law and archives policy that treat the electronic record as official where permitted.
Commission action: A motion to approve the county covering half the scanning project passed on roll call. Commissioner Putnham voted no; Commissioners Schmidt, Uton, Arens and Landine voted yes. The commission directed staff to proceed with the cost‑share arrangement and contract work identified in the proposal.
What happens next: Court staff will coordinate with the vendor and state servers to schedule scanning, indexing and transfer. The county will authorize the expenditure to cover its share of the project.
