Texas Attorney General Issues 60-day Abatement of GA-0519 - Redaction of Social Security Numbers

Attorney General Greg Abbott yesterday abated his February 21st Opinion GA-0519 for a period of 60 days, "in order to allow the Legislature ample time for deliberation, and action."

The last week in February 2007 was a nightmare for County Clerks and people who rely on liberal access to Property Records such as Landmen, Title Companies, Abstracters, Surveyors and others.

As I suggested in my earlier blog, "The County Clerk's offices could turn into a complete zoo with people in long lines waiting for the local deputy to read documents and redact them "on the spot." This is exactly what happened.

CourthouseDirect.com sponsored a Webinar on February 28 titled, "Emergency Meeting - Redaction of Public Records in Texas" and we had over 200 attendees on the phone call. Early in the discussion, Marian Cones, CFO of Integrity Title Records, predicted that some quick resolution would come about because of the impact on the economy the AG's opinion was having. Sure enough, at approximately 9:40 a.m., we got word the Attorney General had abated GA-0519 for 60 days.

On the line in the Webinar were Kristy Parsons, President of Residential Services, Inc. and Carol Grogan, Partner of Central Tejas Research & Title Services.

Kristy's company has researchers throughout the state and explained what she was hearing from her contacts on the ground. Carol gave us a report on County Clerks offices around the Austin area. Carol Grogan's office is two blocks from the capital so she ran over to the legislative hearing of the Energy Resources Committee scheduled at 9:00 a.m and called back into the Webinar. The committee was fast tracking HB 2061 to repeal Section 552.147 of the Government Code. HB 2061 - See ANALYSIS & BILL TRACKING .

By the time Carol Grogan made it to the hearing we received word of the 60-day reprieve. When Carol called into the Webinar she reported the room was already clearing out but there appeared to have been a large crowd represented at the hearing.

By the end of the day, most Clerks had restored their usual procedure and some had put their records back online. But, during the "crisis" County Clerk offices had removed records from the Internet and made it practically impossible to obtain a copy of a real property document, even at the courthouse.

Fortunately, the AG's Opinion was released while the Legislature was in session so that a statutory resolution could be found. If he had delivered this Opinion when the Legislature was out of session then the situation could have been much worse. Since the Legislature was in session, the issue received the attention it demanded immediately.

This is a dilemma over privacy rights versus the public's right to know.

The 79th Legislature passed a law (Government Code, Section 552.147) that County Clerks "may" redact Social Security numbers. The result of the statute, after interpretation by the AG, was that commerce slowed or in some cases came to a grinding halt.

Now the ball is back in the court of Legislature to fix the statute by providing Clerks with additional funding and/or giving them time to put the infrastructure in place for redaction.

Going forward, there is little doubt that documents will need to be redacted or may not be recorded until the filer redacts the Social Security Number.

The Bill under consideration now by the Texas Legislature would place the burden on the filer to make sure that confidential information does not appear on the documents they are recording. The benefits of such a procedure are:

1. The County Clerk would not have to redact social security numbers of dead people
2. Counties with limited budgets would NOT have to spend milions (Houston Chronicle Article estimated $17 Million for Harris County alone)
3. People would take personal responsibility to make sure their own records are redacted
4. The flow of commerce would not be disrupted

This seems like a workable solution.

The IRS has been redacting all but the last 4 digits on their filings for some time now, and some studies have shown that this information alone resulted in a high "hit" rate in matching individual names with Social Security Numbers.

We will continue to monitor this situation and keep you posted. Thanks.