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Recorder briefs Stevens County on judicial-sealing rules, PLSS corner work and records upgrades
Summary
The county recorder updated the board on back-indexing work, a new judicial-sealing process effective Jan. 2 (fee $75) and PLSS corner recordings; staff warned the shield will not retroactively remove records already obtained by third parties.
The Stevens County Recorder (Speaker 2) briefed the board on a range of office operations, including ongoing back-indexing of records, a planned transition to a Laredo Connect payments module, marriage-record scanning backups and a new judicial-sealing (shielding) process that takes effect Jan. 2.
Under the new process, the recorder said, current or retired state judges and qualifying family members can file to have specified documents shielded from public display; the filing requires a $75 fee and a list of documents to be shielded. The recorder noted limitations: records already copied or distributed to third parties cannot be recovered, some document types (for example, petition signatures) may not be eligible for shielding, and the office is still deciding whether to perform research on behalf of filers or to require requesters to provide lists of documents.
On surveying work, the presenter said the PLSS grant effort has delivered 62 recorded government corners and 62 additional corners submitted, with the county recording and preparing to publish a public-facing GIS layer that will allow residents to view identified corner locations. Recorder staff emphasized this is the first step in a much larger PLSS effort that may involve thousands of corners over time.
Other operational notes included a small scanner purchase to back up marriage records, continued coordination with Fiddler/Laredo software for indexing and payment processing, and staffing and process adjustments to handle the new sealing requests. The board asked staff to continue refining procedures and report back with clear public instructions before Jan. 2.
