Web Scraping to bypass FOIA fraud
2020-01-10 18:16:09.375427+01 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
Detroit homeowners overtaxed $600 million
Detroiter Anna Bolden knew something was wrong with her tax bill after she said she bought her west side brick bungalow in a tax foreclosure auction for $4,800 in 2011. That year her bill was $2,600, with the city taxing her as if the house was worth $57,000.
Here, of course, is the real kicker:
The News’ analysis was developed with input from former officials at the city, county and state levels and uses city data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
It also was only possible after staff at Reveal wrote code that scraped delinquent tax amounts from the county's website, data for which Wayne County Treasurer Eric Sabree wanted to charge The News $235,000.