Clerk / Register of Deeds Combination? and Take foreign policy back
The Clinton County Board of Commissioners is considering consolidation of the Register of Deeds and County Clerk offices. When the issue was first discussed, the idea was that it would save money. The County Administrator did an internal financial analysis and determined the combination might save the county $10-16,000 per year. While I believe every dollar counts, the fact is they are not eliminating the job – just parceling it out. The savings, if any at all, are likely to disappear as the office merges into a bigger bureaucracy. And, this phantom “savings” will not save you anything – it won’t lower your taxes, it won’t lower your fees, and it definitely won’t improve performance or service.
Register of Deeds has a critical mission to build and manage the land records system for the county. This includes management of the public records related to every real estate transaction and property-related transaction, filings related to the Uniform Commercial Code affecting businesses, and overseeing the plat process for new or amended subdivisions.
The elected Register of Deeds office has aggressively implemented technology, reduced staff, minimized costs, and served the public well. The Register of Deeds office has always covered all of its costs and flowed $100,000 plus dollars back to the county general fund. Register of Deeds can respond quickly because it is an independent elected office and is accountable directly to county citizens. Eliminating the independent Register of Deeds office would not streamline or shrink government – it would consolidate power and bury the entire land records system in a layered bureaucracy with no direct accountability to the public it serves. For Clinton County this is neither good business nor good government.
The County Board of Commissioners may consolidate the offices but this doesn’t mean they should. There are no facts or savings that support consolidation.
Your opportunity to ask questions, listen to the debate or weigh in on the issue is at a public hearing scheduled Wednesday, March 7, 2012, 7 p.m. at the Clinton County Courthouse, 100 E. State Street, St. Johns, MI 48879. If you can’t attend, contact your county commissioner directly. Tell the board “No” to Big Government and “No” to Consolidation.
Michelle Wilsey
Clinton County Register of Deeds
989-224-5275
wilseym@clinton-county.org
Allegan County Clerk-Register
Combinations:
I was first elected Register of Deeds in 1976. In 1988, the county voted to combine the offices of Clerk and Register of Deeds “to save money”. I have been Allegan County Clerk-Register since that time and am intimately familiar with the duties and functions of both offices. No money has been saved and no efficiencies have been experienced from this combination.
I’ve observed during lawsuits for large amounts of money, when people say, “It’s not about the money”, it’s about the money. When Commissioners say, “We are doing this only to save money”, they really don’t care how much it costs. Now, this statement may sound a little harsh and judgmental, but I speak from experience.
Does it save money?
In the mid 1980’s, when Washtenaw County combined these offices, the serving County Clerk was elected to the combined office. He kept careful financial records and after removing the cost of living increases and step increases for staff, it was clear that the county was spending more to run the combined office than they would have if the offices had remained separate.
When Allegan County combined the offices in 1988, I also kept records to compare the operating costs before and after the combination. Although I wasn’t given even a clerk-typist to replace the working County Clerk, it cost the county money to combine. I had been assured by the Board that if it didn’t prove to save money, they would separate the offices – that never happened.
Both counties found that because staff was unionized, adding responsibilities to existing job descriptions meant pay had to be increased to compensate those staff. Adjusting wages in the Clerk-Register’s office caused employees in other county offices to demand classification reviews to take into account added duties not in their original job descriptions. After hiring the firm to re-evaluate the positions, numerous job descriptions were adjusted – including the ones previously increased in the newly formed Clerk-Register of Deeds office.
Does it promote better service to the public?
Some have said that consolidating the offices would promote efficiencies and therefore provide better service. That has not been my experience. We were able to do more sharing of staff before the combination. After the offices were combined, we were staffed “just enough” to get the work done. Instead of sharing workers, our only option was to offer overtime or comp-time to workers willing to stay after hours.
Both offices deal with records, but the duties performed in each office have changed significantly since the 1800’s when it sometimes made sense to combine the operations. The offices no longer consist mainly of transcribing records and entering basic data into index books so the records can be found. Being a whiz at processing land records will not help you process vital records, court records or election records. In fact, I know of no system where a single computer indexing program can be used to process land records, court records, vital records, Co-partnerships and Assumed Names, DD-214s, gun records, campaign finance and election records. Even if they made one, I wouldn’t buy it because those records don’t belong together, so it would be very costly to produce and foolhardy to use.
Each record type requires a specialized knowledge of numerous statutes to ensure the records are properly processed, indexed and retrieved in accordance with the laws governing those records. Efficiencies can be lost when trying to process records which workers deal with infrequently so trying to swap out a “cracker-jack” land records indexer with a Circuit court records worker just doesn’t work. It would be a little like a mechanic saying, “That air filter is basically round; let’s use it for a tire to get this car back on the road”.
The initial wrangling over the combination of these offices caused so much public contention in Allegan County that at the next election; only one of the commissioners voting for the combination was returned. There was so much contention over this issue that no one wanted to bring up the issue to separate even though they had promised and I could prove to them that it had cost them money to combine. The consensus was, “Well, you’re getting by, let’s not open that door again”. Your taxpayers deserve more than just “getting by”.
Even though the combination has not proven in the past to save tax dollars, why then are Boards anxious to combine? Some may be trying to show their constituencies that they can make government smaller. Combining won’t fix that because those job functions are still there and of vital importance to the county-you just have one manager to oversee two of the busiest offices in the county. State laws require that the same duties be performed after a combination as before the combination, but there will be only one manager in charge. Both office functions need a full-time manager. Great gesture, bad fix.
Is there a better idea?
The first criteria in trying to decide if combining is good for the county should be to determine whether or not it will improve services. Combining the Clerk and Register’s functions won’t improve services since the services provided are so dissimilar and both are usually short-staffed.
If you were to combine the Register’s office with the abstract office, land mapping and equalization, you might find some efficiency. Right now those offices are barely staffed to stay open during the lunch hour. With training and coordination, they could cover for one another if they were together. This combination would allow for more holistic services to people visiting the land offices with problems.
I see these actions being taken nationally as funds are becoming short. Exploring this option would make more sense and would provide better service to the public and could result in some efficiency. The change shouldn’t be about the money, it should be about service to the taxpayer, safeguarding the county records and meeting the needs of the people in your county.
Joyce Watts
Allegan County Clerk-Register
Take foreign policy back
It’s time to take our country’s foreign policy back from those that have kept us at continual war in the Middle East for almost the last decade. A vote for Ron Paul in Michigan’s presidential primary will be a vote for a more sane approach to the Middle East.
It’s hard not to be cynical about current US foreign policy toward the Middle East. It has not changed much through the Bush and Obama years. The US government was determined to remove Saddam Hussein in Iraq (#3 in known Middle East oil reserves), Gadhafi in Libya (#6), and now appears to be setting its sights on Iran (#2 in known oil reserves). If the people of Saudi Arabia (#1), Kuwait (#4), and United Arab Emirates (#5) ever overthrow their ruling royal families, does anyone really believe we will have any more oil-rich “allies” left in the region?(1)
Michigan’s presidential primary is on Tuesday, February 28th. It is open to any registered Michigan voter.
Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent, please go to the polls on Tuesday and ask for a Republican ballot and vote for Ron Paul. His top three donors come from the ranks of the US Army, US Navy, and the US Air Force, and of the candidates still in the race, he is the only veteran.
David J. Smith
St. Johns, MI 48879