Displaying Recorded Documents on the Internet

[kwilson]

This statement is made on the website for the Sonoma County Recorder
"California Law prohibits the display of recorded documents on the internet."
They say that public viewing of these records can be made in our office at no cost.

No cost to Sonoma County but cost of time and gas for the public. Anyone know what law they are referring to?

[mpallamary]

There is no law regarding their position. What they may be referring to is listing personal addresses, etc., of public employees. That is a relatively new law intended to protect public employees from the whackos.

All of these recorded documents are public records by definition.

[mpallamary]

"The PRA defines “public records” as “any writing containing information relating to the conduct of the public’s business prepared,
owned, used, or retained by any state or local agency regardless of physical form or characteristics.”47 The term “public records”
encompasses more than simply those documents that public officials are required by law to keep as official records. Courts
have held that a public record is one that is “necessary or convenient to the discharge of [an] official duty[,]” such as a status
memorandum provided to the city manager on a pending project.

[scarpa]

Ken: Many public agencies will refer to Section 6254.21 of the Government Code which starts out with, "(a) No state or local agency shall post the home address or telephone number of any elected or appointed official on the Internet without first obtaining the written permission of that individual." Many documents (e.g., grant deeds) will have the owners name and address in the "Return To" portion of the document. The "logic" goes something like,...since the Recorder does not know who is - now or going to be - an elected or appointed official, it is easier to not place any document on the internet where someone could query the name of an elected/appointed individual and then cause them harm. Remember, this Section was enacted in the mid-90's when search engines were not what they are now.
With regards to maps, I do not believe this should apply. Has anyone every seen a home address or phone number of the individual who lives at the parcel shown on a map? I have not. Trying to convince a Recorder of that perspective has been a losing battle for me. I applaud those counties that do share maps online via their GIS platform.

[DevaProto]

Good afternoon!
Someone brought this post to my attention, and I thought I could respond directly. Regardless of if it is outdated (as noted by scarpa), Government Code 6254.21 (and also GC 6254.24, which leads to Penal Code 830-830.65 and Vehicle Code 1808.2, 1808.4 & 1808.6) states that we shall not knowingly post the home address or telephone number of any elected or appointed official… on the Internet. If it was posted, a written request would require us to take it off the internet. There are a couple of points to this.

First, our office has no way of knowing who is an elected or appointed official. Thanks to 6254.24, the term is very broad. It is not just those commonly considered to be elected officials. It includes a broad variety of people such as a peace officer (which includes sheriff and police employees, marshals in courts, DA investigators, CHP, university police, and law enforcement employees at DMV, ABC, Fish & Wildlife, Parks & Recreation, the California State Lottery, investigators at EDD ), an employee of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the surviving spouse or child of a peace officer (if the peace officer died in the line of duty), active and retired judges, active or retired peace officers, employees of trial courts, a child of a member of a board of supervisors or city council or employee of a trial court (regardless of where they live) (as well as others). Our office has absolutely no way to track all the employees that would qualify and move documents in and out of a system for public viewing. We simply don’t have the staffing or resources. We also don’t have the resources to redact this information.

If we did post the recorded documents, any of these officials would be able to make a written demand to not disclose it (and we would have to comply). In that scenario, assuming that we had the resources to go through and remove documents, the information online would not be complete. Right now, I do not know of any recorder system that would be able to remove one deed from the public view while leaving another. Disputes over the Recorder index by public officials have caused other counties to remove their entire index from the internet, due to legal advice and this code section.

Recorded documents often contain addresses, or APNs or other ways of locating a property. Although APN is not an ‘address,’ we still are not supposed to post that with the owner name. That is why you cannot search recorded documents by APN (if it is indexed) online, and why the Assessor and Tax Collector do not post owner name with property assessment and tax information. Records of survey, while not generally containing addresses, do usually contain the owner name and a way to identify where the properties are, such as vicinity maps or APN.
I have seen records of survey posted in other counties, but they are generally posted by the Surveyor’s Office, not the Recorder. I am currently unaware of any Recorder in California that publishes their documents online.

Sonoma County has tried to expand access to our recorded documents, by allowing purchase of the documents online, specifically so that someone does not have to come into our office. We have also proposed a comprehensive GIS map that would contain data from the Recorder, Assessor, Tax Collector, Elections and Permit departments. If you have any questions, you are always welcome to contact me directly.

Deva Marie Proto
Sonoma County Clerk-Recorder-Assessor
Deva.Proto@sonoma-county.org

[Edward M Reading]

Maybe those Government Codes need to be changed. It works well in other states where I have worked.

[Jim Frame]

[I tried to edit this, but it came out as a new post. Please disregard.]

[Jim Frame]

I have seen records of survey posted in other counties, but they are generally posted by the Surveyor’s Office, not the Recorder. I am currently unaware of any Recorder in California that publishes their documents online.

With regard to maps, allow me to fix that for you:

https://www.solanocounty.com/depts/ar/asr_filedmaps.asp

All Final Maps, Parcel Maps and Records of Survey are available at no charge. No login required, just download the desired maps, no muss, no fuss. I consider Solano County to be the gold standard for serving up public maps, and encourage all counties to emulate their system.

[Jim Frame]

Furthermore, the idea that "California Law prohibits the display of recorded documents on the internet" is discounted by the fact that Yolo County sells Official Records copies online. You may have to set up an account -- I'm not sure, because their per-document costs are substantially higher than my private-sector vendor -- but the information is available directly from the Recorder online.

[DevaProto]

Yes, Sonoma County also sells documents online. That is not the same as posting them online publicly. You have to purchase the document first, and then you are able to download the document. Yolo and Sonoma use the same recording system, and we have been allowing online purchase of recorded documents for a number of years.
Thank you for sharing the Solano link! Every other one that has been shared with us has been the Surveyor. I will check with Solano regarding their legal determinations.
Deva

[mpallamary]

Food for thought:

Constructive notice is the equivalent of actual knowledge; i.e., knowledge of its contents is conclusively presumed. (Citizens for Covenant Compliance v. Anderson)

“By statute, any instrument "affecting the title to ... real property may be recorded" by the "county recorder of the county in which the real property affected thereby is situated." (Gov. Code, §27280, subd. (a); Civ. Code § 1169.) "Recording consists of copying the instrument in the record book and indexing it under the names of the parties. (See Govt. C. 27257, 27322 et seq.)" (4 Witkin, Summary of Cal. Law, supra, Real Property, § 200, p. 406.) Civil Code section 1213 provides that every "conveyance" of real property recorded as prescribed by law provides "constructive notice" of its contents to subsequent purchasers. The term "conveyance" is broadly defined to include "every instrument in writing ... by which the title to any real property may be affected ...." (Civ. Code, § 1215, italics added.) Constructive notice "is the equivalent of actual knowledge; i.e., knowledge of its contents is conclusively presumed." (4 Witkin, Summary of Cal. Law, supra, § 203, p. 408, italics in original.) CC&Rs, which affect title to real property, have long been recorded under these provisions. (See, e.g., Riley v. Bear Creek Planning Committee (1976) 17 Cal.3d 500, 504 . . .; Scaringe v. J. C. C. Enterprises, Inc., 205 Cal.App.3d at pp. 1540-1541, 1543-1544 . . .” Citizens for Covenant Compliance v. Anderson (1995) 12 Cal.4th 345, 355.

[Jim Frame]

Yes, Sonoma County also sells documents online. That is not the same as posting them online publicly.

Just for fun, I visited the Yolo County Recorder's website and ran a search on a Yolo County Superior Court judge. I got a page full of hits for His Honor's deeds, deeds of trust, etc. But when I tried to buy one, the document was unavailable for purchase. What does that tell me? It tells me that the county maintains a list of public officials, and the document purchase mechanism filters out documents pertaining to those officials. That same mechanism could be used to filter documents made available without charge. So the "well, selling documents is different" argument doesn't sound very convincing to me.

P.S. I was able to buy His Honor's deed from my private-sector vendor, so the afforded protection would seem to be rather thin.

[PLS7393]

I have seen records of survey posted in other counties, but they are generally posted by the Surveyor’s Office, not the Recorder. I am currently unaware of any Recorder in California that publishes their documents online.

All Final Maps, Parcel Maps and Records of Survey are available at no charge. No login required, just download the desired maps, no muss, no fuss. I consider Solano County to be the gold standard for serving up public maps, and encourage all counties to emulate their system.

I wish Santa Clara County was that easy for the most part. The County Surveyor is helpful, but overwhelmed and he can't hire anyone for support. We use to have a simple process to pull up recorded maps by Book and Page through the Planning Department website. They recently updated the server and now it can be a pain to get a filed map, especially a more recent map that hasn't been posted on the map research GIS site. It is common to miss a recent survey which would have been helpful to you during initial research.

It is so bad, the submitting surveyor doesn't even get a filed copy of their map, because the Recorder's Office says the County Surveyor can't give any maps away for free!!!

Now who's on First? (He is lockout too)! LOL