A Fox 25 expose last month trailed North Essex Register of Deeds Robert F. Kelley for several days, catching him doing…well, not much: On several occasions, Kelley spent only a few hours per day at his $90,000 per year registry job.

Now, State Sen. Stan Rosenberg (D-Amherst) has seized upon the revelations from the Fox report to suggest that several registers of deeds be consolidated.

He’s filed a bill that would eliminate seven regional register positions, leaving one for each of Massachusetts’ 14 counties.

The proposal would save more than $600,000 from the state budget, Rosenberg says, and is receiving a warm reception in the statehouse, garnering co-sponsorship from legislators in two of the affected districts.

“So far, two have co-sponsored the bill, and half a dozen have said they like [the idea],” Rosenberg told Banker & Tradesman. “Nobody has said ‘You’re out of your mind.’”

Register Kelley did not comment, deferring instead to Anthony Vigliotti, president of the Register and Assistant Registers Association. Vigliotti and other peers expressed a mixture of concern over the bill and dismay at Kelley’s apparent shirking of his duties.

“The registers as a group are concerned about [Rosenberg’s bill],” Vigliotti said. At a meeting in Worcester last week, the Register and Assistant Registers Association met and voted unanimously to express their opposition, he said.

Secretary of State William Galvin, whose office administers the registries, has also come out against the consolidation plan.

“I don’t think it’s helpful,” said Galvin, saying that in his opinion, since the registries were placed under state control, they had performed their functions well and progressed smoothly towards incorporating new online recording services. “I think the savings come at the cost of having a hands on administrator, which I think is very important,” he said. When the bill comes to a public hearing, Galvin said he intends to testify against it.

No Contest

The changes would take place during the next election cycle; existing registers would have to campaign for the seat on a county-wide basis. That could mean suddenly stiff competition in what is often an uncontested campaign: A look at campaign filings with the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance reveals that only eight of the 21 current registers ended the last election cycle with more than $10,000 in their campaign coffers, with several spending zero dollars on reelection efforts their last time around. Two of the registers whose offices would be consolidated under the new bill, Wanda Beckwith and Frances Brooks of the Southern and Northern Berkshire County Registries, had less than $200 in their accounts.

Though the bill would consolidate the registries so that there was only one elected register per county, the offices themselves would remain open and staff would be unaffected.

“They all have assistants, and some of them have two or three, so if you can do the job in two or three hours a day,” there’s no reason an assistant couldn’t take over, said Rosenberg.

The registers, however, quibble with the proposed savings, saying that consolidating the registries would require integrating now separate computer systems and filling vacant assistant posts in order to make sure each office had a day-to-day supervisor.

“[In] Worcester, for example – I don’t have assistant registers. We didn’t fill those vacancies because of budgetary concerns,” Vigliotti said. “So I think it’s a falsity that there’s going to be $600,000 worth of savings.”

Other registers, too, were concerned that the efficiency savings of reducing the number of registers might be overstated, pointing out that some of the districts which would be consolidated under the plan serve far larger populations than those which would remain independent, and require greater supervision.

“The population of the district I have is 302,000 – if we were an independent county, we’d be the ninth-largest in Massachusetts; my district has more people than Barnstable, Hampshire, Dukes and Nantucket,” said Richard Howe, the registrar for Northern Middlesex County.

Howe was not unsympathetic to the case for reform, but felt one underperforming register shouldn’t tar the others.

“I have no doubt the senator’s motivated by trying to reform what are some pretty clear abuses. I think that if any of my colleagues spent all or substantially all of their time [out of the office], I think that’s something they should be held accountable for,” said Howe. “Because they’re certainly getting paid to be there full-time, and if they’re not, I think they’re cheating the taxpayer. And you can quote me on that.”

A Valuable Role

Howe and other registers agreed that for most, the job takes all of their time, and that they perform an important public role. Kevin Harvey, first assistant registrar in Southern Essex County, pointed to the recent public campaign by Southern Essex Register John O’Brien to highlight what he described as abuses of the land recording system by the Mortgage Electronic Recording System (MERS), a consortium founded by large national banks and Fannie and Freddie.

“We’re attempting to try to get MERS to try and return millions to the state coffers, so we’re very very busy here,” said Harvey.

Howe, too, stuck up for his own role in his community.

“I’m answerable to the voters of the district. Every person who calls, emails or walks in here is one of my constituents, and I do everything I can to make sure that everyone who comes in has a good experience with this office,” said Howe. That local touch would be something Lowell residents would miss out on if the offices are consolidated, he said. “Historically, someone from Lowell hasn’t had much success running county-wide.”

That’s an argument even Rosenberg gives some credence to. “We might want to take a look at that and see if there’s something else that needs to be done to make it fairer,” he said.

But “many offices are already [contested] countywide – sheriff, some court districts,” he said. State legislators run and win from all over their districts, Rosenberg points out.

Whatever happens, the registers don’t seem willing to go down without a fight.

“What they miss is, those facilities are not costing the taxpayers any money – they bring in far more money than what it costs to run them, and in this is in bad times,” said Vigliotti. “In good times, they are cash cows for the state treasury. So we’re kind of at a loss to understand why [you would] eliminate an effectively run operation.”