BILL ANALYSIS
SENATE LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE
Senator Patricia Wiggins, Chair
BILL NO: AB 827 HEARING: 7/1/09
AUTHOR: Yamada FISCAL: No
VERSION: 6/24/09 CONSULTANT:
Weinberger
COUNTY RECORDERS' FEES
Background and Existing Law
County boards of supervisors can levy authorized fees or
charges in amounts reasonably necessary to recover the
costs of providing products or services or the cost of
enforcing regulations (AB 151, Hannigan, 1983). The fees
or charges may reflect the average cost of providing
products or services or enforcing regulations, plus limited
indirect costs. Despite generally deregulating county fees
25 years ago, state law still sets a large number of fees,
including county recorders' fees.
California's first Legislature required counties to "safely
keep and preserve books, records, deeds, maps, and papers"
that were deposited and kept in a county recorder's office,
including documents that were not officially recorded
(Chapter 58 of the Statutes of 1850). Today, counties must
comply with a variety of statutes governing the storage,
accessibility, reproduction, and destruction of public
records and documents. State law still requires counties
to preserve permanent copies of many property-related
documents, like maps and records relating to the title to
real property. Some county governments have established
archival programs to preserve their historical papers and
artifacts.
To help pay for the costs of preserving some counties'
aging archives of property-related records, county
officials want to impose fees on the recording of certain
property-related documents.
Proposed Law
Assembly Bill 827 authorizes a county board of supervisors
to provide for the archiving of historical county records,
including records pertaining to real property, local agency
AB 827 -- 6/24/09 -- Page 2
meetings and actions, roads and other public works, and
other records of general public or historical interest.
To fund a portion of the cost of these activities, AB 827
authorizes a board of supervisors to adopt and impose a fee
of up to $3 on the recording of property-related documents
that refer to one or more previously recorded documents,
previously archived documents, or both. The fee may not
exceed the estimated reasonable cost of providing the
authorized archival services authorized with respect to
deeds, indentures, surveys, parcel and subdivision maps,
and other property-related documents.
The bill requires the board of supervisors to direct the
county recorder to deposit fee revenues into a special
fund. Proceeds from the fund must be expended by a county
recorder only to defray the cost of providing archival
services in connection with property-related documents,
including:
Costs associated with indexing those documents,
Providing reasonable access to those documents and
assisting the public with regard to those documents,
and
Preserving those documents in a manner that ensures
their physical integrity, security, and longevity.
AB 827 requires that archival services provided by a county
recorder that receive proceeds from the special fund must
follow professional practices recommended by the Society of
American Archivists for the management, care, and
preservation of historical records.
Comments
1. Pay to preserve . With the passage of time, preventing
the deterioration of 19th Century maps and other property
records held in counties' archives requires increasingly
costly measures, including climate-controls, acid-free
storage materials, and the skills of professional
archivists. The preservation of these historical documents
can play a role in establishing the validity of many
property-related documents that are recorded today. For
example, century-old maps and deeds can help to establish
the chain of title for a recently purchased parcel of land.
As counties' General Funds are stretched to the limit,
AB 827 -- 6/24/09 -- Page 3
county officials want the authority to fund a portion of
their archival costs with fees generated by individuals who
use their archival services. AB 827 lets counties pay for
some archival service by imposing a user fee on individuals
who record property-related documents that reference
previously recorded or archived documents, and who,
therefore, clearly benefit from counties' preservation of
archived property records.
2. Broad purpose, narrow base . The value of preserving
deeds, surveys, maps, and other property-related documents
in county archives extends beyond the role that those
documents play in validating newly recorded
property-related documents. Local historians,
genealogists, academic researchers, and the
community-at-large all benefit from counties' preservation
of the historical data contained in archived land records.
The Committee may wish to consider whether AB 827 asks
individuals who record property-related documents to
disproportionately bear the burden of paying for the
archival preservation of property-related documents.
3. Not an option . To a impose a fee on a broader universe
of individuals who benefit from county's archival
preservation efforts, county officials might consider
charging anyone who requests the retrieval of documents
that are stored in county archives. However, this type of
fee is not an option because it would be a barrier to
public access to government documents. The Public Records
Act does not permit fees that exceed the direct costs of
duplicating a record. Proposition 59 (2004) guarantees
that public meetings and writings are open to public
scrutiny and requires legislative findings identifying what
interest is served by any statute that limits the right of
access to public meetings or writings. Because of these
constitutional and statutory restrictions on charging
individuals who wish to use archived documents, county
officials must look elsewhere for fee revenues to support
archival services.
4. Too specific ? AB 827 currently requires a county
recorder to expend the proceeds from the authorized fees on
archival services provided by the county recorder's office.
Because archival services in some counties are performed
by agencies other than the county recorder's office, this
provision of the bill appears to be too restrictive. The
AB 827 -- 6/24/09 -- Page 4
Committee may wish to consider amending AB 827 to allow the
board of supervisors to expend proceeds from the fee to
fund any county agency's costs for performing the
authorized archival services.
Assembly Actions
Assembly Local Government Committee: 5-2
Assembly Floor: 48-32
Support and Opposition (6/25/09)
Support : Yolo County, California Historical Records
Advisory Board, California Historical Society, Friends of
the Yolo County Archives, Society of California Archivists,
Yolo County Historical Society, 2 individuals.
Opposition : California Association of Realtors, California
Taxpayers Association, Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.