County recorders: fees.
To the Members of the California State Assembly:
I am returning Assembly Bill 1430 without my signature.
This bill would increase county recording base fees and make various changes to the allocation of these fees. Specifically, this bill would increase the record and indexing fee to $15 for the first page, and $4 for each additional page. For documents dealing with the ownership of land in counties - including payments of taxes or fees, deeds, mortgage documents, easements - and any documents that affect the ownership of any given property, this bill would increase the recorder fee from $1 to $3 for each additional page.
Californians realizing the dream of property ownership rely on recorder offices to handle important documents with care, making these offices critical points of interaction between residents and their government. I appreciate the author's intent to improve the efficiency of California's land title system, for both the public and county recorders, to ensure expeditious processing of real property records. However, raising these fees on Californians will disincentivize efforts to think innovatively about how to deliver recording services at a lower cost, faster, and with better customer service. I encourage the author and counties to consider ways to achieve that goal without solely relying on fee increases.
For this reason, I cannot sign this bill.
Sincerely,
Gavin Newsom