BayCounty.me API

Every dataset on the Open data page is also available as an API. Responses are JSON (or CSV with format=csv), and every row carries a link to its source record. Rows are served live from the BayCounty.me database, so newly added records show up within about five minutes; each response says where its rows came from in meta.data_source.

curl 'https://baycounty.me/api/v1/datasets/contracts?government=Bay%20County%20BOCC&amount_min=1000000&sort=-amount&limit=5'

curl 'https://baycounty.me/api/v1/datasets/votes?board=Lynn%20Haven%20City%20Commission&split=true&date_from=2025-01-01'

curl 'https://baycounty.me/api/v1/datasets/salary-positions?category=law_enforcement&fields=employer,title,pay_min,pay_max&format=csv'

Base URL: https://baycounty.me/api/v1 · Machine-readable description: OpenAPI 3.1 (import it into Postman, a GPT action, or any OpenAPI tool).

• Match a column: ?government=City%20of%20Callaway (spaces as %20; the catalog lists each column's allowed values). Matching ignores capitals. Separate several values with commas to match any of them: ?outcome=failed,tabled.
• Ranges: add _min or _max to a number column (amount_min=500000) and _from or _to to a date (date_from=2025-10-01).
• Text: _contains on a column (vendor_contains=roberts), or q= to search every column.
• Not equal: _ne leaves out values (outcome_ne=passed; commas for several).
• Empty or not: _null=true finds rows where a column is blank, _null=false rows where it has a value (amount_null=false). Blank values never match _min, _max, _from or _to.
• Totals: group_by=government&sum=amount returns one row per group with count, sum_amount and n_amount (how many numbers were added), largest group first. Filters apply first, and it works with format=csv. Example: contract dollars by government.
• Sort: sort=-amount,date (a minus sign sorts high to low).
• Columns: fields=vendor,amount,source_url.
• Paging: limit (up to 1,000, default 100) and offset. The response's meta.next is the link to the next page.
• Caching: responses carry an ETag (and Last-Modified where the data's date is known). Send it back as If-None-Match (or If-Modified-Since) and you get 304 Not Modified with no body when nothing changed.

You don't need a key. Without one, each connection can make a set number of requests a minute and per day (each response's headers show how many are left). If you need more, or want your use tracked separately, ask for a key.

Send a key in any of these ways (the header is best, so the key stays out of logs and browser history):

curl -H 'Authorization: Bearer bcm_your_key' 'https://baycounty.me/api/v1/datasets/votes?limit=5'

• Authorization: Bearer <key> or X-API-Key: <key> header, or ?api_key=<key> on the URL. The MCP server takes the same header.
• Every response carries X-RateLimit-Limit and X-RateLimit-Remaining (per minute), plus X-RateLimit-Limit-Day and X-RateLimit-Remaining-Day when a daily limit applies. Daily limits reset at midnight Central time.
• Over a limit, you get status 429 with a Retry-After header in seconds. A wrong key gets 401; a paused, revoked or expired key gets 403.

BayCounty.me runs a Model Context Protocol server, so AI assistants that support remote MCP servers can look up these records directly and cite them. There's no sign-in.

https://baycounty.me/api/mcp

• Claude: add a custom connector and paste the address above.
• Other assistants and tools: add it as a remote MCP server using the "Streamable HTTP" transport.
• Tools it offers: list_datasets, query_dataset, get_government, search_site, upcoming_meetings (by government, days ahead or a keyword such as a street name), member_voting_record (one board member's votes, including when they were in the minority) and vendor_profile (one company's contracts, change orders, payments, CRA payments and business campaign contributions; a match doesn't show why anything happened).
• Resources: each dataset is also an MCP resource at baycounty://datasets/<id> (up to 2,000 rows; the full file is linked).
• Example question: "Which Bay County contracts over $5 million went to campaign donors, and how did commissioners vote?"