Stephanie Norman, who oversees Burke County’s registered-deeds office, briefed the Board of Commissioners Dec. 15 on the office’s services, recent trends and operational challenges. She told the board the office will be able to issue birth certificates for adopted individuals starting Jan. 1, 2026, citing passage of what she referenced as "Senate Bill 248." Norman said that initial services will be in-county and that the office expects to expand to out-of-county requests later.

Norman gave detailed service statistics: about 12,000 land-records documents recorded annually (roughly 47 documents per working day), more than 16,000 vital-records requests annually (~62 per day), and increases in new births (+8.7% over last year) and marriage licenses (up nearly 26%). She described passport work as a revenue source the county retains and reported significant year-over-year increases in passport photos and applications, noting the county keeps application and photo fees rather than sharing them with the state.

On fraud, Norman warned of document fraud and foreclosure-rescue scams involving powers of attorney, described the office’s limited role (the recorder must accept documents that meet recording standards) and said the office offers a free fraud-notification alert system so residents can receive emails when documents containing specified names are recorded. She referenced proposed state legislation (referred to in the presentation as "Senate Bill 423") that would increase penalties and change notice/ID rules for non-trusted submitters.

Norman also described operational improvements — an AI assistant dubbed "Courtney" launched 03/31/2025 to assist quality assurance, and new phone-network reporting to track workload — and cited space constraints and delays in death-certificate processing as continuing challenges.