I need some help

[dmartin29]

This is, at this time, a purely personal request. I don't know where this can go for the for "The Greater Good". I assure anyone that if I can find a way to make that happen I will. Here is the situation.

I was born (I fully believe). I was adopted as an infant in New York State (Rochester) in the early 1950's. Birth Records, including updated one's due to changes are kept in the County Dept. Of Health Archives. In the early 1960's I had a Passport, my own, not on one of my adoptive parents passports. There was some trouble getting that. A time delay with maybe a trip to Albany (State Capitol) for the "main copy" of the "Birth Certificate".

In 1980 I had a "legal name change" done in a County Court in Kentucky, where I lived. I have copies of that order and just obtained more "Certified Copies" of the order. Someone, the Judge or my Attorney at the time was supposed to forward that information to New York (Albany) for an amended Birth Record to be filed. I don't know if anyone did that but am checking on that now.

On March 1, 2004 I contacted The Monroe County (Rochester) Dept. Of Health for a copy of my Birth Certificate so I can finish applying for Social Security Disability and a Passport. A very nice, seemingly competent woman there called me a week later to say there was a problem. I had sent all the info above, with names, dates, copies of records etc. and she said she had to forward that to Albany to get the records from there. I waited until April, 1 to follow up when I had heard nothing. After calls to Albany and Rochester I was able to find out that in Rochester there is a copy of my record, updated for the adoption but not for the name change and it is "illegal" for them to send me a copy that does not have the current name. Albany has the same record but claimed that the name change never got to them. If I submit all the name change information they will update the record and send me a Birth Certificate. The money amounts do not matter in my case, I can afford what they are asking but here is the rub. In addition to sending another $50 to Albany they say they have a backlog and it will take one year to two years to do this.

NY uses a "service" where you can get your birth records by mail from the state in (quoted yesterday) about 6 to 7 months (with none of my changes as above) or you can use "VitalChek Network" and get them in 14 days for an additional charge. VitalChek has all kinds of options, Internet, Fax, Phone, FedEX, Special Handling etc. So I checked VitalChek to see how these "outsourcers" could do this so fast. The State employee said they were not outsourcers just a contract company that helped them (Duhh). VitalChek is a subsidiary of Choice Point Inc. Our old friends from GA who want to control all the data of our lives! (Remember the FL voter roles, felons purge?).

I need to fight this for me. Why should my state take two years to produce a record that they are contracting another company to do in two weeks? I follow politics quite closely here and don't remember our state abdicating their role in maintaining records. Why should a simple name change, take so long. I won't trouble you here with the math but the State Supervisor told me how many requests they have to process and the size of the staff as a reason it took so long. I worked it out to their staff would have to be typing at a rate of ten words a minute four hours a day, four days a week to go a slowly as he said.

The help I need is reference to some succinct pieces from 2001 on Choice Point and their relationship to the Republican Party and some of the past transgressions of the company. I have a good "Google" search on the "Big Articles" and some large volumes of stuff on them. I need the "little" anecdotes that flew around. I need to impress my State Leg. People and their attention span is only going to cover one big article but they may be able to handle twenty or so "bullet points" (they do have a bullet point mentality, Oh how I hate those). Any help on Choice Point would be appreciated, Thanks