Lowell Deeds

Last evening, the joint conference committee of the legislature issued its report resolving differences between the House and Senate budgets. Both houses of the legislature are scheduled to vote on the conference committee report (available online here) today, so presumably we will have a state budget ready for the Governor’s signature by the end of the day. As expected, the budget contains substantial cuts across the board including a 15% reduction in this registry’s funding. While it is understandable in light of the scale of the current worldwide economic crisis, such deep cuts will have adverse consequences on our operations (such as the elimination of our Middlesex South Satellite Recording Office). Fortunately, the cuts will leave us sufficiently staffed to perform our core statutory mission which is to operate the Middlesex North District Registry of Deeds.

Besides each registry’s individual line item in the budget, the line item in the report that provides the funding for the operation of the Secretary of State’s office includes several directives by the legislature to the Secretary that directly effect the operations of the state’s registry’s of deeds. The specific items I noticed were:

1. Requiring the Secretary to file with the legislature no later than Feburary 1, 2010 a staffing report for the entire office (including the registries of deeds) that includes job titles and responsibilities and rates of compensation;

2. Giving the Secretary of State the authority to transfer money appropriated for the operation of one registry to the budget of another registry; and

3. Requiring the Secretary of State no later than June 30, 2010 to issue regulations governing electronic recording of documents and requiring each registry performing electronic recording to comply with such regulations.