Lowell Deeds

Registry employees held their Super Bowl party today. There was plenty of foods, cakes decorated as football fields, and a wide variety of Patriot’s clothing and decorations. Be sure to check out the photos on our website. Almost all of the experts say New England should win; that the Patriots are a better team; that Carolina is lucky to be there. I do agree with all that, but I also have this strange sense that two years ago, a lot of people in St. Louis were saying the exact same things, only then, it was the Rams that were the superior team (and the Patriots were indeed lucky to make it to the Super Bowl in 2001-02). Back in October 2001, I traveled to several different cities to view various registry of deeds computer systems to help select a replacement for our decrepit Wang. Plans called for a Monday visit to the Mecklenburg, North Carolina Registry of Deeds, so Sunday became a travel day with flights from Boston to Atlanta and Atlanta to Charlotte. I arrived at the hotel in downtown Charlotte to discover Eriksson Stadium just a block away with a game between the Carolina Panthers and the New York Jets already under way. I wandered over, someone gave me a ticket, and I caught the entire second half from the upper deck of one end zone. The Panthers stunk. The final score was something like 34 - 3; another loss on their way to a 1 and 15 season. That was only two years ago, so today, I have a hard time seeing how a team that was so bad can win the Super Bowl in just 24 months.

Representative Kevin Murphy (D-Lowell) is filing legislation that, if enacted, will supersede the recently released Executive Order regarding Notary Publics. This Order, thought by many to impose undue burdens on Notaries, does not go into effect until April 19. Rep Murphy’s bill (there are a number of co-sponsors) would direct Secretary of State William Galvin to promulgate regulations regarding the conduct of Notaries. The bill would also limit the use of certain translations of the term “Notary Public” that, in other languages, might imply that the Notary is an attorney or a specialist in immigration law. While there is certainly a need for the Commonwealth to provide guidelines for Notaries, the governor’s effort over does it.

Several years ago, the Secretary of State’s Office organized the Address Confidentiality Program which was designed to protect individuals who were the objects of stalkers. A person enrolled in the program would be assigned a post office box at the Secretary of State’s office and all references to the person’s address - on a driver’s license, phone and utility bills, school registration, etc - would list that post office box. The group that designed the program considered whether Registry of Deeds records should be included but decided that they should not. Our system of land ownership depends on the accuracy of the records at the registry. If some are “blacked out” or kept separately, an element of doubt would be injected into an otherwise reliable system. The only way to own real estate without having your name appear in the very public records at the registry would be to create a trust, name someone else as the trustee (with you as the beneficiary - the names of the beneficiaries are not recorded), and then have the real estate you are buying conveyed into the trust. It’s complicated, but it would keep your name out of our records.

A big question people had about electronic recording was the speed with which documents submitted electronically would “go on record.” This is how it’s supposed to work: When an electronic document arrives, a registry employee will open the image of the document alongside the data related to that document. We will compare them and ensure that all the regular requirements of recording are met. This should only take a few minutes. Then, the registry clerk will “save” the document, just as she would with a paper document with a customer standing across the counter. The document will immediately be assigned instrument, book and page numbers and will officially be “on record.” In the coming weeks, we will test the system to determine just how quickly this all will happen. We understand your concerns about the time and order of recording and will keep you informed of developments as the system evolves.

About 30 registry users met at the Doubletree Hotel in Lowell this afternoon with representatives of ACS (Affiliated Computer Systems), the company that will be assisting us in bringing Electronic Recording to Massachusetts. While there is much planning and discussion to be done, everyone seems very enthused. We will use the blog to keep everyone informed of our progress. If you have any questions or would like specific information about electronic recording, just send me an email by clicking here.

Tomorrow (Monday) will be the first meeting of the Electronic Recording Work Group. We’ve organized a small group of registry users who are willing to help us plan and implement the first fully functional electronic recording process at a registry of deeds in Massachusetts. Although we will not begin electronic recording until March 1, much thought and effort must be devoted to the details of the process we will be using to ensure that we are successful. If you have any thoughts on this topic, please use our newly installed “comment” feature to share your thoughts. Check back with this blog for frequent updates on this process.

This week’s Lawyers Weekly carried an article about the governor’s recently issued guidelines for notaries (”Stirct New Rule for Notaries Worries Bar”). The two biggest concerns of lawyers seemed to be that confidential client information would be disclosed in the notary journal that is subject to inspection by almost anyone. The other concern was the overall burden of recording all of the information required in the journal. Most notaries I have spoken with are pleased to have some type of formal guidance regarding how they should perform their duties although just prescribing the duties and not requiring such burdensome record keeping would probably have been enough. The governor’s legal counsel indicates in the article that this is all designed to combat forgeries and fraud. But if a notary is willing to acknowledge a forged signature, what would stop that same notary for filling his journal with bogus information? It seems that this “solution” to a serious but relatively limited (in frequency) problem will create headaches for everyone. On a positive note, the chief legal counsel made it pretty clear that failure to comply with the precise notary requirements of this order should not effect whether or not the document is recorded. That’s the right answer, as far as we’re concerned.

This morning’s Boston Globe carried an amazing story about a computer hacking scandal in Washington, D.C. Is seems that Republican staff members of the Senate Judiciary Committee gained access to the files of the Democratic members of the committee. The Democrats thought all their stuff (which included politically sensitive and confidential plans and strategy) was secure and that only users with the correct password could access the files. Well an IT person (working for the Democrats - or who used to work for them) forgot to flip the switch on the security settings, giving everyone access. The Republicans apparently felt no ethical obligation to either disclose the security flaw or at least avoid reading the Democrats confidential material. They not only read the stuff, but they leaked substantial amounts of it to friendly members of the press. When Democratic memos began appearing verbatim in certian newspaper columns, the Democrats got suspicious and investigated the leak. At the Registry of Deeds, we are always concerned about the security of our computers. When you read a story such as this, with supposedly honorable government officials exploiting gaps in computer security, it reminds you why you should worry about hackers.

Many news outlets today wrote about a survey on attitudes towards technology that was released by MIT. Thirty percent of adults identify the cell phone as the invention they most hate but cannot live without. Other essential, yet despised, inventions include alarm clocks, TVs, electric razors, microwave ovens, coffee pots, computers and vacuum cleaners. This was a yearly survey conducted by the Lemelson-MIT Program, an organization that honors those who have helped improve our lives through invention. The institute’s 2002 survey, available on its website, compared attitudes towards technology among teens and adults. Teens ranked wireless communications and computers very high and TVs quite low; adults ranked them in reverse order. What’s this got to do with the Registry of Deeds? Technology is allowing radical changes to occur. Electronic books, Internet access and, in March, electronic recording will fundamentally alter the way registries have operated for the past 300 years. Those of us who decide how to implement this new technology have to understand it and its implications. That’s why we read (and write about) stuff like this.

Middlesex South recorded more than 1000 documents with the new ACS computer system today. In the satellite office in Lowell, several hundred of these documents were recorded and scanned without any major difficulties. Customers using the public access terminals noticed the great improvement in the retrieval time of images (almost instantaneous) compared to the agonizingly slow pace of the old Wang system. Speaking of Wang, yesterday’s decommissioning of the old Cambridge system represents the end of the Wang era in Massachusetts registries of deeds. When first installed in the early 1980s, Wang computers held much promise. But the Lowell-based company made some bad business decisions and, over time, abandoned its customers while it staggered from one unsuccessful business plan to the next. Life at the registry will be better with Wang gone.

The Middlesex South conversion to the ACS system was successful this weekend. We tested the system by recording and scanning a dozen documents from Lowell. Everything seemed to work fine. The public access terminals are connected to the new database so all images are instantly available for viewing and printing. All registry users should really like this new system. Congratulations to the New England Patriots for a great victory yesterday.

This morning I was a guest on “The House Market” a radio program hosted by Dennis and Donna Ready from 9 to 10 a.m. each Sunday on Lowell’s WCAP (980 AM). Dennis and Donna talk about specific properties and also items of general interest in the real estate business. On the air, we talked about the registry’s website and the changes that electronic recording will bring. We also discussed the new regulations for notaries. Links to the regulations and the new “clarifications” can be found on the first page of the registry’s website. We also talked about this blog and blogs in general. One thing I didn’t talk about was the ability of readers to post comments to the blog. We had set up a comments feature, but the company we were using (at no charge) has experienced some difficulty (i.e., it disappeared). So we’ll try again with another provider as soon as possible - hopefully by tomorrow.

The History Channel (Channel 58 on Lowell cable TV) is showing a new documentary, Martin Luther King Jr Day: The Making of a Dream” on Monday at 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. If you have to work and miss the documentary, check out the History Channel website (follow the link above). There’s a tremendous amount of interesting information available online.

Governor Romney gave his State of the State address last night. Mostly he talked about education issues, but he also mentioned closing the $1 billion deficit by eliminating more waste in government but without raising taxes. However they choose to deal with the deficit, this office really can’t afford any more cuts. Our budget has been level funded at $1.3 million for the past four years. Since our costs certainly haven’t stayed constant or decreased during that time, “level funding” really constitutes a significant cut. It’s not like the registry is a financial drain on the state: last year alone Middlesex North collected nearly $27 million in fees, thanks to the refinancing boom and to the big hike in filing fees back in March. Another reason for watching the governor last night was in case he said anything about the weather. Yesterday afternoon, as news spread that hundreds of schools had cancelled classes for today due to the cold, the registry was abuzz with the rumor that the governor would declare a state of emergency. But, since the registry falls under the Secretary of State, it’s up to William Galvin to close registries, so a gubernatorially declared state of emergency really wouldn’t effect us. We are open today, despite the minus-14 degree temperature and significant wind chill.

The governor’s office has issued some clarifications of Executive Order 455 (regarding Notaries Public). The effective date of the order has been pushed back to April 19, 2004. This “clarification” reiterates the requirement that all notaries must have a seal or stamp that contains the notary’s name, the words “notary public” and either “Massachusetts” or “Commonwealth of Massachusetts.” It must also have the expiration date of the notary’s commission and a facsimile of the great seal of Massachusetts. If your current seal has everything but your name and expiration date, you may still use it but only if you get a separate stamp that has those two things on it in which case you’d have to use both your original seal and this new stamp. The requirement that a journal be maintained continues. The journal must be a bound book with sequentially numbered pages although if the entries are sequentially numbered, that will meet this requirement. Finally, while the original order said to be a notary, you must reside in the Commonwealth, the order will be modified to continue to allow people who live outside the state but who conduct business within Massachusetts to serve as notaries.