Since I took office as Lawrence County Auditor just a little over a month ago, I have been enjoying learning my new role in county government. In Ohio, the County Auditor’s Office is the hub of local government, and our office is working hard, doing our job to make your local government more efficient and more accessible to you.

One of the best tools the Auditor’s Office provides is our website, www.lawrencecountyauditor.org. For years this website has been a great resource for researching property, and obtaining data regarding the real estate market. Also, many people find the mapping function, which was added in 2010, particularly useful.

Although the website was very good when I took office, we have been working hard to upgrade the site to make it even more useful.

Recently, we have added several features including convenient links, downloadable forms and 24/7 access to county financial reports.

Convenient Links

For your convenience, we have added links to other websites of interest in the county including direct links to the Recorder’s site, the Clerk of Courts site, and the Engineer’s site. These direct links should help make it easier for you to navigate through your county government’s websites and gather the information you need.

As a bonus, we have also added links to all of the schools’ websites in the county as well as the Auditor of State’s and Department of Taxation’s websites.

Downloadable Forms

Also, in the forms section of our website we have made available many of the forms offered from the Auditor’s Office including but not limited to the homestead exemption, property transfer, new construction, and demolition forms.

Of course, we still have all of these forms available in our office, but now you have the ability to obtain these forms directly from the website at your convenience without having to personally come to the courthouse.

County Financial Information

Perhaps of great interest to many, we have also added a tab that will display reports regarding the county’s finances. We have already placed the year end Cash Position Report for years 2008, 2009, and 2010 on the website for review. As we move forward, we will post monthly reports of the cash position and the budget of every county office and every county agency on the website as well.

The Lawrence County Auditor’s office is committed to providing citizens efficient access to accurate information. Hopefully, these enhancements will give better access to county government and other data that the County Auditor’s Office provides.

Take a look at the website, and if anyone has any suggestions as to what else they would like to see available, please send me an email at stephens.jcs@gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from our taxpayers.

Jason C. Stephens is a former county commissioner and currently serving as the Lawrence County Auditor.