eBusiness Meeting
March 11, 2004
BOYD LAKE ROOM, 200 W OAK ST,
FORT COLLINS, COLORADO
Meeting Minutes
Jack Arrowsmith, Chairman, opened the meeting. Welcome and thanks were given to our host, Angela Dashlich, Larimer County Public Trustee.
There was an introduction of the guests:
Kate Gleeson, with Castle Meinhold & Stawiarski
Chelsea Shea, Consultant, Ciber, Inc.
John Lough, with ACS
Anita Dubas, Denver County Deputy Public Trustee
Roll Call of Members:
Present:
Jack Arrowsmith, Douglas County Public Trustee
Marilyn Bullard, Douglas County Chief Deputy Public Trustee
Larry Castle, Attorney, Castle, Meinhold & Stawiarski
Angela Dazlich, Larimer County Public Trustee
Michelle Miller, Park County Treasurer/Public Trustee
Ginger Dyer, Security Title, Bailey, Colorado
Sandy Hume, Boulder County Public Trustee
Jim Wills, Boulder County Chief Deputy Public Trustee
Wayne Vaden, Denver County Clerk & Recorder/Public Trustee
Those not present were:
Roxy Huber, City and County of Broomfield Revenue Manager/Public Trustee
Alynn Huffman, Gilpin County Treasurer/Public Trustee
Approval of February 19, 2004 minutes:
There were no corrections or additions. Minutes were approved as written.
Jim Wills gave up-date on Secretary of State.
We are making progress with e-filing. There is still $1.6 Million available of state level funds. Data conversion was not an intended purpose of the state funds, however Wayne met with Donetta Davidson about adding this possibility using the pooled funds. Weld County hopes to go live on May 14, 2004 with e- recording. El Paso County is updating their recording system and requesting $360,000 by late spring. The Technology and Business Standards
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Committee is promoting open architecture and is working towards everyone being able to submit without going through a single system.
Public Trustee’s still have to apply through Clerk & Recorder’s of their county for the funds. There are concerns that the original statute did not include Public Trustees and changes may be required to include P.T.s.
The Index Committee is doing a great job. It is more complicated than originally thought. We can satisfy 80 or 90 percent of the problems of e-recording with indexing.
Letter from Bob Sagel to the Indexing Committee:
This letter asked that the indexing committee require the State Parcel Number as part of their indexing standards. If the committee felt “required” was too strong, the letter suggested that it be “strongly” recommended. We are still waiting to hear what action the indexing committee will take on the letter.
A new sub-committee of the S.O.S. e-recording task force is the Submitters Committee, which is headed by Mark Budzinski. Mark represents the title companies. Some of the problems that the title companies foresee may not have been addressed at the appropriate time. Submitters are looking at level 2 instead at level 3 and want to get to Level 3. Jim Wills stated: “We have said before, e-recording is not something that is mandatory. We are in the infant stage and we cannot serve everyone’s needs instantly. We need to be on board to help our relationship with the Clerk & Recorder’s offices.”
On the national submitters level, Wells Fargo has requested to be a test for submitting releases to Douglas County. County Wide (CTC) should also participate. Boulder and Denver would like to participate as well and feel that they are in the position to do so along with Douglas County.
Jim Wills asked us all “How do you spell E-recording?” He feels we should make a decision on this that would be a standard. Suggestions were: e-Recording, E-recording, e Recording, E recording. Jim Wills asked if anyone would oppose “e recording” as a spelling or e-recording. After more discussion, Jim asked for a vote and a written, silent vote was taken. The highest vote getter was eRecording.
The Secretary of State Advisory Panel will meet on March 26, 2004 at 9 a.m. You can participate in the hearing via phone. Call Dana Williams in the Secretary of State will set you up with a phone number. Call Dana at 303 894-2200 ext 6108.
The bill started with the Judiciary Committee, then the Finance Committee, and scheduled to go to the Appropriation Committee on Friday March 25th. Finally it will go to the floor of the house before moving on to a similar process in the senate.
On Friday, March 5, the Real Estate Committee of the Bar Association came out in opposition to the bill. Larry Castle indicated that it is going to the LPC tomorrow. (This is the governing body of the Bar) They will recommend that the Bar take a stand against the document registration of the bill. Wayne Vaden is a member of the bar and will attend the meeting tomorrow to present the Public Trustee viewpoint.
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Jack understood that the Real Estate section of the bar proposed that Treasurers, Sheriffs, and Public Trustee’s no longer notarize documents. Rich Krohn, the Public Trustee Association Attorney, will write an opinion. Five counties have agreed to pick up the fees for this. Rich says it will take about five hours so the fee should be about $200 per county. We hope to have the opinion paper as soon as possible from Rich.
There are no specific requirements for a notary on the Public Trustee Deeds, but it may be required on the Certificates of Purchase and the Certificates of Redemption. The committee hopes that the official seal of a government official would have the same weight as the notary in authenticating the signature of a government officer. Jim Wills asked about Releases, Larry Castle did not have a specific answer to that. Larry reiterated that the non-authenticated document clouds a title for 5 years. In specific government offices with trusted officials, a notary may not be required.
There are objections to the electronic journal entry. If Title companies, lawyers, real estate brokers, etc, maintain a copy of the document in their office, a journal would not be needed. The committee felt that keeping an electronic journal would be an additional workload.
Bob Sagel asked Jack to find a member of the house or senate that would carry a late bill if it became necessary. Additional questions that need to be answered include: How soon would this legislation be ready to go? Could there be a draft for review with Larry and another attorney? It is not clear if the Bar Association has given the go ahead on new legislation. When will we get the opinion letter for the Public Trustee’s. Who will be drafting this legislation for the bar?
Issues and concerns included: P.T.s need input on the initial draft. Clarification on seal authentication. The bill needs to be broad enough to cover statutes beyond just those effecting P.T.s. We need to get it done as soon as possible or it will not get done. Suggestion to attach this to 1300 if everyone will agree to it. The only opposition seems to be against the electronic journal. Sandy Hume suggested that we use the lobbyists to talk to the sponsor and try to get the bill passed. Jack Arrowsmith stated that Mike Shea from the Secretary of State’s office thinks that the Appropriations Committee is not going to be a problem with getting the bill passed through.
Douglas County – Waiting on the decision about notarization. We should be ready within weeks when this clarification is determined and we can move ahead quickly.
Boulder – They are waiting for the finalization of the Kuvera and ACS joint Venture in Colorado. This venture should serve the Public Trustee’s office, Clerk & Recorder, ACS, and Kuvera well. As soon as the ability is available to load the software, they are ready to sign a contract and get going.
Denver – Ingeo e Recording System Presentation by Wayne Vaden.
They are looking at ACS/Kuvera, Ingeo, US Recording, and Hart Systems. US Recording is connected to US Bank and is able to submit immediately. Denver is going to look at Ingeo
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tomorrow. The advantages Denver sees with Ingeo include: 22 plus submitters; are already working with 22 Counties; working with Level 3 documents, including Releases; the system could be installed in Denver in 30 days to go live with Wells Fargo and probably Countrywide; they will grow submitters as they go: Price: $20,000; no document charge for the county, highest charge would be $1.75 per submitters; ACH daily in the Public Trustee account; does automatic validation; information from the bank includes Deed of Trust and the computer validates the Deed of Trust automatically but would also have a manual ability; no Maintenance Fee; all updates and supplements can be done by them; Ingeo wants to do only Level 3 recordings, but can do Level 2 as well.
Denver plans on meeting with the other vendors before making a final decision. All of the members of this committee and Public Trustee’s are invited to see what Ingeo has to offer at the Denver office. Wayne wants all of the Public Trustees to move in a similar direction. Ingeo knows the submitter community and this will drive the volume. It was suggested that there be one Public Trustee portal. We realize that the rural areas may have trouble catching up; but, we want to keep them in the loop. Ingeo, US recordings, ACS can get submitters of their own and all will submit to the counties. The hope would be the portal would be free to anybody who is going to submit. This could promote competition, but there might be possible restraint of trade questions.
The committee agreed to make sure that Chelsea Shea, the consultant from Ciber, is included on our e-mail list. It was agreed that if anyone was meeting with a vendor, they will inform the other committee members.
Working with level 3 documents makes the rules for notarization crucial.
Larimer County – They are in an E-business, wait and see mode. Their Clerk & Recorder is not yet comfortable with the technology. They need to get some accounting problems solved. Their foreclosure package is almost ready to launch. Carol Mast is the developer. Angela will let us know when it is ready to be marketed.
Park County – They are the first county in the state to take internet payments for taxes. They have been receiving internet payments since January, by Credit Card. The customers are charged 2.8%.
Jack Arrowsmith – Overview of 365 public sector members most are clerks. This meeting was the first time any Public Trustee were in attendance. There are private sectors involved.
At the conference change was described as follows: 30% are in favor, 30% are fence sitters, 30% resistors, and 10% will not agree to change. It was pointed out that in a change environment too much time was spent with the 10%, because they will never move forward.
Jack attended an XML workshop and brought back some basic information.
XML stands for extensible machine language. XML allows for automation of process, imaging, and integration. Extensible – means the ability to identify data. The XML language was selected for eBusiness because you can move data from location a to b, is machine and people
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friendly and has a long shelf life. This is a universal format not controlled by one company. It is a public entity language with different outputs: paper, laptop, cell phone, and web.
There are many acronyms that have to do with e-business.
HTML is the language of the web
XHTML – moving this direction
Smart document – smart is an acronym representing a paper document in electronic form.
WC3 standard – this is what we are looking for in releases. Allows us to change the document, but lets us know if it has been tampered with.
Electronic Signature – A signature that is actually put on the document.
Digital signature – not a signature at all but symbols or characters that represent a signature.
Level 3 – PKI private key. Provides security
There was a session on privacy issues related to public documents. Public Documents date back for 5000 years. These documents are public because: They can validate fair taxation, fraud prevention, action by courts, and collateralization of real property. The United States is different from most other countries in our ability to collateralize real property. In other countries only your promise to pay is needed.. It is easier in this country to get a loan. The first Federal Privacy Officers in the U.S. works for the Homeland Security task force.
One session discussed the elimination of Social Sec #’s on doc’s - There was no consensus on this issue.
The was considerable discussion, at the P.R.I.A. conference, about electronic notarization. The National Notary Association has an electronic journal available for purchase. Arizona already has rules on electronic notarization. Michigan, Kansas, and Colorado all have pending legislation.
The Mortgage Satisfaction Act is being proposed because many individuals are having problems getting payoffs statements from their lenders. The act proposes a time limit of 15 days to deliver payoff, and making them liable for $500 fine if not followed. The lender then has 30 days to release the mortgage or deed of trust. This relationship between the owner and the lender, omits the public trustee. Once the act is finalized it will go to each state to determine if they will enact it. Jack sent info about the Colorado public trustee’s to the recorder of the act.
Uniform electronic recording act – This is a ways from becoming a reality.
Wayne Vaden talked about the concern over proper archiving. Denver and other counties may not have correct maintenance at this time, and, they may not be able to extract information in the future. DVD’s have a 300-year life; we hope technology exists to retrieve this information at that time.
Jim Wills was impressed by the PRIA organization. Although small at this time, he believes the will become very influential in the future. The function of setting standards will be good for the government, industry, and the public. Jim feels they will initially set policy and the have additional responsibility of policing these policies. We in Colorado have a great opportunity to influence PRIA. The lenders are already on board with PRIA. Colorado can influence how public records are handled both now and in the future. There is a process to become PRIA certified and it makes sense, if it is not expensive.
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PRIA membership is $100. You can access PRIA’s website and see their information and presentations. Most counties could benefit from becoming P.R.I.A. members if only to access information about all the sessions held at their national conferences.
The next Metro Meeting was announced. It will be held in Brighton Wednesday, March 17, 2004. Mike Coffman and Peg Ackerman will be making presentations. There is a $25 fee for the meeting registration. Jim, Michelle, and Angela plan attend and were asked to give us a presentation at the next meeting.
The Eastern Division meeting is in Limon, March 18 & 19, 2004. Angela said that you always learn something in Limon. There will be an e-recording presentation at 3 p.m. by Jack Arrowsmith and Jim Wills on March 18th.
Our next meeting will be held and hosted by Douglas County, April 29, 2004, 11 p.m., the meeting will continue through lunch which will be served about 12:00 noon.
Respectfully submitted by
Marilyn Bullard, Secretary
E-Business Committee