Bill would create $100 surcharge to fund clerks’ offices and state archives; Secretary of State backs measure

House Bill 1207, which would add a $100 surcharge to most filing fees collected by clerks of superior court, drew testimony Tuesday from the Secretary of State and the state archivist who said the fee is needed to preserve records and stabilize services.

Staff summarized the bill: clerks are required by statute to collect many filing fees; HB 1207 would add a $100 surcharge on most filing fees with two enumerated exceptions (petitions for anti-harassment protection orders and certain fees from nonindigent adult defendants). Of the $100 surcharge, staff said $35 would be transmitted to the state treasurer and $65 retained by the county treasurer and deposited into a clerk’s administrative assistant fund that only the county clerk may expend for statutory duties of the clerk’s office.

Secretary of State Steve Hobbs told the committee the office is facing declining revenue from the document recording fee and that the archives building is aging and leaking. “We have an aging building that is leaking,” Hobbs said, describing damage risks to historic documents and saying the office lacks a stable funding source for archives preservation and some positions. Hobbs floated a possible reallocation idea—suggesting language that could allocate parts of a filing surcharge to archives, interpreter services, indigent defense and clerks—but said that is a negotiation point rather than current bill language.

Washington State Archivist Heather Hirotaka said the archives currently holds records from county clerks and that staff helped clerks access records during a recent court outage by giving them admin access to transferred files. Hirotaka told the committee the archives stores roughly 48,400,000 records and that several counties are waiting to transfer records into the digital archives but that the office lacks staff capacity to onboard them because of revenue declines.

Questions from members focused on access and potential effects on people’s access to justice. Representative Walsh asked whether a new fee would limit access to justice; Hobbs responded that without funding the archives cannot preserve records and that alternative is general-fund support. Representative Jacobson asked about the relationship between legislative funding for the Secretary of State’s office and user fees; Hobbs described a mix of fee-funded and general-funded functions.

Next steps: The committee heard the bill and received testimony from state officials; no committee vote occurred on HB 1207 during this hearing.

Ending note: Supporters emphasized record preservation and operational stability for clerks and archives; opponents may raise access-to-justice concerns as the bill advances.