NJ - Middlesex County: Glitches with Title-Search System

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MIDDLESEX COUNTY: County to upgrade title-search system

Home News Tribune 3/16/00 By SARAH GREENBLATT STAFF WRITER

Middlesex County officials agreed yesterday to make new upgrades to a controversial land-record system, closing one chapter in a longstanding dispute.

Under a tentative settlement agreement with the Middlesex County Title Searchers Guild, the county will make further adjustments to a computerized index used for locating records of land transactions and generate updated paper versions of the listing until the system garners state certification.

Members of the guild hailed yesterday's accord as a victory in their 2-year-old quest to make the new technology as reliable and easy to use as the older technology.

Despite a series of modifications, the computer system first implemented in 1998 has drawn ongoing criticism from the searchers, who claimed in a lawsuit that county officials acted illegally by replacing the former technology with equipment that had not been certified.

Last week, a state official said lingering complications with a new search engine the county introduced early this year might render the system ineligible for certification for some time.

Yesterday's agreement, negotiated by Superior Court Judge Bryan Garruto, requires the county to implement changes that would enable searchers to find index entries by typing fewer characters into the computer, thereby broadening the search and ensuring more records will appear on the list.

Contending the change will make the technology more like the reliable century-old Russell Index, guild members voiced dismay that county officials had not agreed to the upgrade sooner.

"Why has it taken this?" searcher Phyllis Maurath said, referring to the guild's litigation. "The traditional index is very very important to us."

Guild attorney Lawrence Cohen said until recently, county officials had claimed the new technology could not be modified as the searchers had hoped.

"They suddenly said they could do it within two weeks," Cohen said. "On Friday, they indicated that it could not be done."

County Clerk Elaine Flynn said, however, that the searchers undermined officials' efforts to rectify acknowledged glitches by filing a lawsuit that turned the two groups into close-mouthed adversaries.

"I have always had an open door, always tried to get them what they wanted," said Flynn, a defendant in the lawsuit. "You put up a wall between you -- how could you get anything done?"

Once officials realized the nature of the searchers' request, she said, it became clear the county had the means to comply.

If the new upgrades are effective, guild member Ann Sardone said the searchers' biggest complaint with the system will be quelled.

But Maurath said some of the issues in the guild's lawsuit have not yet been addressed, such as difficulties searchers have cited with locating hand-written notations in the margins of computer-scanned document images.

Copyright 1997-2000 IN Jersey.

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-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), March 19, 2000

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Middlesex County's online records woes may be worse

Published in the Home News Tribune 1/28/00

By SARAH GREENBLATT STAFF WRITER

Middlesex County officials hope today's visit by state reviewers will silence criticism of their computerized land-records system, but they acknowledged yesterday a recently discovered index glitch may be more far-reaching than they first thought and could take months to correct.

The beleaguered system, which title searchers contend in a lawsuit has made it impossible to locate records of land transactions reliably since its installation in 1998, could come closer to certification as a result of a visit today by officials from the state Division of Archives and Records Management, County Administrator Walter DeAngelo said.

If the DARM approves a new search engine and online document- retrieval system that are ready for installation, DeAngelo said, problems that title searchers have cited with locating transaction records could be eliminated soon.

Officials also have purged a computer index of thousands of entries that made "Virgin Mary" and "Saints" appear as deed and mortgage holders, county Management Information Systems Director Khalid Anjum said.

"All the Virgin Marys are gone," Anjum said, explaining that the religious phrases had appeared because lengthy names of two area churches were abbreviated and superimposed on multiple entries during a 1972 computer conversion of an index that listed transactions dating to 1946.

But, Anjum said, officials recently have learned that the index also may contain an unknown number of other corporate or organizational names that similarly may have been condensed but have not yet been found.

The entire index of transactions from 1946 to 1972 will have to be checked for improper abbreviations before it can be added to the system, he said, adding that he "optimistically" hopes to resolve the problem in a month.

In the meantime, the hard copies of those records will remain in use, as they had been until that portion of the index was introduced into the computer system earlier this month.

DeAngelo said the problems stem from the prior computer conversion of the older index and not from the software that was installed in 1998 under a contract with IBM.

But the Middlesex County Title Searchers Guild, contending the new system increases the risk that outstanding property liens will not be found, hopes to force the county to maintain hard-copy records of land transactions.

Legal motions that the guild has filed toward that end are scheduled to be heard in state Superior Court on Feb. 4.

According to documents subpoenaed by the guild, IBM experts working with the county had scant knowledge of the certification requirements created by the state in 1997 for land-record imaging systems.

Richard C. Teitelbaum -- IBM client manager for New Jersey government, who sent an e-mail message to the DARM in June stating he was unaware the state had created certification standards for record- imaging systems -- noted yesterday it was the county's responsibility, under its contract, to make sure that the system would pass muster.

County Clerk Elaine Flynn said yesterday that she does not remember whether county officials in 1997 had sought state input on the system they intended to buy and that former MIS Director George Balascak might have handled the matter.

Since the county purchased the system under a state purchasing contract, Flynn said, the equipment and software should have met state standards.

Teitelbaum said, however, state purchasing contracts identify which pieces of hardware and software are eligible for acquisition by local governments without specifying which products meet certification requirements for different purposes.

DeAngelo, contending the company initially had delayed implementing some of the county's recommendations for addressing the searchers' concerns, said the company has stepped up its efforts in recent months to bring the county's system into compliance with the standards.

DeAngelo said the county and the company are committed to resolving searchers' concerns and voiced confidence that the system soon will garner state approval.

But in the meantime, guild members have stopped certifying the accuracy of their searches, leaving companies that insure property titles vulnerable to potential damages.

The lack of certification by searchers drives up the potential for significant liability "should the inevitable catastrophic error occur," Lancaster Title Agency owner John W. Trojan said in a certified statement to the court.

Larry Feinberg, a past president of the New Jersey Land Title Association, said that while the industry has not yet experienced major losses, there is a potential for substantial liability -- and future insurance-premium hikes.

"Over a period of time, there could be substantial losses," Feinberg said. Copyright 1997-2000 IN Jersey.

http://www.thnt.com/news/app/story/0,2110,244674,00.html

-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), March 19, 2000.


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