Senate Bill S2601

                                 BILL NUMBER:  S2601

 TITLE OF BILL :

An act to amend the county law, the real property law, and the civil
practice law and rules, in relation to a standardized cover page fee
to be charged by county clerks and prohibiting a county clerk's office
from accepting any document which includes unnecessary personal
identification information


 PURPOSE :

To allow county clerks to reject documents which contain unnecessary
personal identifying information and establish a statewide uniform
standardized cover page filing fee to provide county clerks with
additional resources to review and process documents pursuant to this
new policy.

 SUMMARY OF SPECIFIC PROVISIONS :

Section 1 of the bill adds a new §528-a to the County Law to require
County Clerks to refuse for recording documents which contain
unnecessary personal identifying information not required by state or
federal law.

              

Section 2 adds a new subdivision 1-g to §333 of the Real Property Law
to require recording officers to reject any conveyance which contains
a driver's license number, credit card account number, bank account
number, a complete date of birth or more than four digits of a social
security number.

Section 3 adds a new §8021-a to the Civil Practice Law & Rules
establishing a statewide uniform cover page fee of 510 except in Erie
County where it shall be $15.

Section 4 is the effective date.

 JUSTIFICATION :

Identity theft is a serious problem nationally which has increased
dramatically since the advent of the Internet According to a recent
report by the Better Business Bureau, there were nearly 9 million
victims of identity theft in 2005. The average victim spends more than
40 hours recovering from this crime. The County Clerk's office is the
official repository of many documents, ranging from deeds and
mortgages, to all records of Supreme and County courts, to tax liens
and warrants. Except for certain sealed court records, these filed and
recorded documents have always been readily available to the public in
their offices. To a resourceful criminal these papers represent a
treasure trove of information. The United States government has for
many years filed tax warrants in every County Clerk's office and with
the Secretary of State, and has until recently included the complete
social security number of the tax delinquent on the warrant. Decades
of court records have used an individual's birth date and/or their
home address as an aid to identifying that specific person. Until this
past year (when the County Clerks of New York and the State's
Attorney-General successfully campaigned to change the law) military
discharges recorded by veterans were accessible by anyone, though all
of these contain the veteran's social security number.

In every County Clerks' office, an infinitesimal number of publicly
recorded mortgages have been found to contain personal identification
information placed there by the financial institution which originated
he mortgage, either inadvertently or deliberately. These documents,
generally a dozen or more pages of dense type, are not scrutinized
word-for-word by the County Clerk's office when submitted; indeed, if
the document appears "correct as to form" and is accompanied by the
proper fee, the Clerk has no choice but to record it.  Twenty years or
more ago, when many of these mortgages were recorded, the present
security concern over social security numbers and dates of birth
within public documents did not even exist.

While there has never been a single demonstrated instance where County
Clerk records (either online or inside the Clerk's office) were used
to steal someone's identity, the potential for such misuse exists and
is a growing concern for the general public and the Legislature.
County Clerks have made great progress in preserving their records and
in improving access to them in recent decades. Microfilm has long been
used in most counties to accomplish these goals, and increasingly
Clerks are relying on electronic imaging for these purposes. The
increased use of imaging has led County Clerks nationwide to further
improve public access to these public documents by making them
available over the Internet. While sealed records remain sealed (and
unavailable online), the movement to make unsealed public records more
and more accessible is gaining momentum, with an increasing number of
records repositories allowing online access, which has been favorably
received by the press and public. At present, some County Clerks in
New York State provide free online access to some or all of their
records; others charge either a subscription fee or a per-item fee for
such access; however, a majority do not yet provide any Internet
access.

By requiring County Clerks to reject documents which contain
unnecessary personal identifying information, they can continue to
provide the greatest access to the greatest number of records while
significantly reducing the risk of misuse of the information in the
documents. In addition, and equally as important, establishing a
uniform statewide standard cover page fee would provide revenue to
enable County Clerks to invest in new technologies, update computers,
add staff to comply with the new processing requirements of this
legislation and offset recent state actions which have reduced County
Clerk revenues. Also, this measure would eliminate confusion that
currently exists as a result of different Clerk's offices charging
varying fees when they attach a cover page to recorded documents.
Under this legislation, County Clerks which are not authorized or
required to impose a cover page fee would be exempt from the
provisions of this act.

 PRIOR LEGISLATION HISTORY :

2006: Senate 3rd Reading Calendar/Assembly Local Governments
Committee.  2007-08: Senate Local Government Committee/Assembly Local
Governments Committee

 FISCAL IMPLICATIONS :

None to the state. It is anticipated that the requirement that
documents be rejected will demand additional staff hours to process
and properly identify documents to be declined. The fee authorized in
the bill is expected to more than offset the additional staff costs.

 EFFECTIVE DATE :
This-act shall take effect on the first of September next succeeding
the date on which it shall have become a law.