For years, Portage County has been Wisconsin's black hole of online court records, the only of the state's 72 counties not to participate in the wildly popular CCAP system.
But now, the state court system announced Portage had finally joined the clan, after the new Clerk of Circuit Court had her staff work "tirelessly" with state court system staff to convert 180,000 files dating back 25 years.
"We will now be able to provide greater security in a variety of ways for court files, as well as allow greater access by the public to our court information," Patricia Cal Baker said.
But don't rush online to look up your Stevens Point friends and relatives quite yet. The case information won't show up for a few months, according to the state courts system, "after court staff works to ensure the data converted from the local Portage county system is accurate and complete."
As the court system likes to explain, CCAP actually is the Consolidated Court Automation Programs that offers lots more than case lookup to judges, clerks and lawyers within the system. The online public access component is properly known as WCCA -- Wisconsin Circuit Court Access. But it will always be CCAP to us.