BILL ANALYSIS
SENATE LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE
Senator Dave Cox, Chair
BILL NO: AB 1919 HEARING: 6/30/10
AUTHOR: Davis FISCAL: No
VERSION: 6/21/10 CONSULTANT: Detwiler
SURVEY MONUMENT PRESERVATION FUND
Background and Existing Law
Counties charge survey monument preservation fund user fees
to property owners who record grant deeds that convey real
property. Grant deeds for lots created by recorded tract
maps are exempt. The fee can't exceed $10 or an amount
set by the county board of supervisors that doesn't exceed
the amount reasonably necessary to provide the cost of the
service. The funds can't be used for any other purpose.
The revenues go into a survey monument preservation fund to
pay for the county surveyor's work in retracing major
historical land division lines that private surveyors use
when surveying property. The surveys rely on permanent
monuments as the physical evidence needed to establish
property boundaries. The county surveyor can contract with
private surveyors for this work or allow a city engineer to
perform the work within the city.
If a city engineer in a city with more than 1,500,000
residents (i.e., Los Angeles) preserves the survey
monuments in that city, the county recorder must send the
revenues collected from the grant deeds recorded in that
city to the city treasurer (AB 2855, Bradley, 1986).
Over 80% of the grant deeds recorded on property within the
City of Los Angeles are exempt from Los Angeles County's
user fee because tract maps created the lots. The City
says that the County's fee generates about $40,000 a year
for monument preservation work. If the County imposed the
fee on the grant deeds for all parcels, the City would get
about $200,000 a year. That's enough to preserve more than
220 additional survey monuments a year. The City wants the
Legislature to broaden the base against which counties can
charge these fees.
Proposed Law
AB 1919 -- 6/21/10 -- Page 2
Assembly Bill 1919 repeals the current prohibition against
charging county survey monument preservation fund fees
against grant deeds that convey parcels which were created
by recorded tract maps.
AB 1919 allows a county to deduct an administrative fee of
up to 10% to pay for the county recorder's costs before
depositing the revenues in the county survey monument
preservation fund.
The bill also makes clarifying and technical changes.
Comments
1. Bigger base, bigger program . Accurate survey monuments
benefit the private surveyors who work on new subdivisions
and other land development projects. Unreliable survey
monuments can result in confusion and costly lawsuits over
property lines. When county surveyors preserve key survey
monuments, they're helping to avoid property disputes.
That's why state law allows counties to charge fees to pay
for preserving those essential monuments. The current
exemption in state law for previously subdivided lots means
that counties charge their user fees against a narrow base.
Neither they nor the City of Los Angeles receive enough
fee revenues to pay for vigorous preservation programs. If
the rate stays the same, but the base grows, a fee
generates more revenue. If counties charge their existing
survey monument preservation user fees on all parcels, then
the county surveyors will have more money to replace more
survey monuments. AB 1919 generates more money for the
counties and the City of Los Angeles to preserve more
survey monuments.
2. Who pays? Who benefits ? Current law exempts existing
parcels from the county user fee because people who buy
lots that were created by previously recorded subdivisions
don't need survey monuments to define their property lines.
Private surveyors laid out the parcels' property lines
when they created the subdivisions. Because they don't
directly benefit from a county's program to preserve survey
monuments, they don't pay the county's fee when they record
grant deeds. In the City of Los Angeles, for example,
about 80% of the grant deeds are exempt from the existing
AB 1919 -- 6/21/10 -- Page 3
user fee because the deeds are for existing subdivided
lots. The Committee may wish to consider whether AB 1919
imposes a user fee on property owners who don't use the
service. Isn't that the definition of a tax?
3. Local option already available . When the 1986 Bradley
bill proposed hiking the county survey monument
preservation user fee from $10 to $15, the Senate Local
Government Committee instead amended the bill to recognize
county supervisors' ability to raise the fee above the
statutory cap of $10 as long as county officials show that
the higher fee didn't exceed the county's reasonable
service costs. If a county's current fee doesn't cover a
county's costs of preserving survey monuments, the county
surveyor can ask the board of supervisors to raise the fee
and generate more money. Instead of widening the base as
proposed by AB 1919, shouldn't local officials use current
law to raise the fee?
4. Recorders too . Current law expressly prohibits
spending money in the survey monument preservation fund for
any other purpose than preserving monuments. Faced with
county fiscal pressures and budget shortfalls, county
recorders want ways to pay for their state-mandated costs.
AB 1919 allows county recorders to recover their
administrative costs before depositing the balance in the
protected fund. The bill caps this diversion at 10%. The
Committee may wish to consider reducing the limit on
administrative costs to 5% or even lower. What are the
county recorders' real costs of collecting and forwarding
checks to the county treasurers?
Assembly Actions
Assembly Local Government Committee: 6-2
Assembly Floor, passage refused: 40-32
Assembly Floor, reconsideration: 45-28
Assembly Floor: 43-33
Support and Opposition (6/24/10)
Support : City of Los Angeles, California Land Surveyors
Association, County Recorders Association of California,
California State Association of Counties, Regional Council
AB 1919 -- 6/21/10 -- Page 4
of Rural Counties, Counties of Butte and Humboldt.
Opposition : California Association of Realtors.