Granville’s Ideas Have Merit : Recorder right about cutting fees; merging offices deserves study

In private business, it is not uncommon for managers to be rewarded for saving money. Those who do more with less can wind up with a bonus or an increase in salary.

Too often in government, the reverse is true. There have been numerous stories over the years of managers facing the end of their fiscal year spending money on frivolous items simply because they wanted to spend what their budgets allowed. The fear was that any savings would be reflected in budget cuts in coming years.

Orange County Clerk-Recorder Gary L. Granville has his priorities right. He has urged the Board of Supervisors to cut the basic fee for recording documents.

Granville is suggesting the board reduce from $7 to $4 the extra levy on recording fees set aside to upgrade the office’s equipment and technology.

Granville said his office now has a fund of more than $10 million to complete the modernization plan. That program includes converting document retrieval to CD-ROMs and an imaging system.

The office still will be collecting about $500,000 a year to pay for maintenance on its machines, Granville said. He noted correctly that government should not collect more money than it needs, even if it doesn’t spend the excess but squirrels it away in special funds here and there.

This is not the first time that Granville has proved a good steward of the public’s money.

More than two years ago he persuaded the supervisors to merge his office of recorder with that of the county clerk. It was a sensible change.

More than a decade earlier the two offices had been split because of dissatisfaction with the way the clerk’s office was being run.

Granville shaped up the clerk’s office, smoothed the way for the increasing use of computers and improved morale. When he proposed combining the clerk’s office with that of the recorder, he knew his job would be abolished. But he won the election for the combined post several months later.

Now Granville has also proposed combining the clerk-recorder job with that of the assessor. He contends hundreds of thousands of dollars would be saved by eliminating duplication.

That is an idea that needs further study. Granville has proved an adept manager. But there is a danger that he might be biting off more than he can chew or that a successor in the elected post would not have his abilities. Given the importance of the immense amount of documents a combined office would handle, from marriage licenses to valuations of property, it’s a bit early to go full speed ahead on consolidation right now.