Both candidates vying for Greene County Recorder said improving electronic access to documents is a priority for the office.

Armed with a staff of nine people and an annual budget of about $495,000, the county recorder’s office copies and indexes about a 100 documents each day including deeds, mortgages and military service discharges. State law requires the office to make the copies available within 24 hours.

Incumbent Republican Eric Sears is being challenged by Democrat Martin Bochers

Sears said the recorder position, which comes with a $57, 232 salary, is an administrative position which requires a balance of providing access to public documents with protecting private information.

Sears, a 62-year-old native Daytonian and Wright State University Business graduate who is running for a second four-year term, said the major focus of the office right now is on making more documents easily accessible online for the general public at no cost while maintaining privacy and access to personal information.

Sears and the other county recorders in the state received a letter from the state auditor in June stating the law did not permit the recorder’s office to charge a fee for online subscriptions.

In Greene County, the recorder’s website included a subscription fee base commercial website for bankruptcy, land and real estate records.

County residents shouldn’t have to bear the cost of the office providing information for commercial users, Sears said.

“There is nothing that says we can’t charge,” Sears said.

He said the online fee-based commercial website was put in place after consulting with the county prosecutor’s office and there are opinions from the local prosecutor’s office as far back as 2007 which support the recorder’s office charging a fee for the commercial based system.

Bochers was critical of the recorder’s fee based website.

“That only shows where his priorities lie,” said Borchers, a 26-year-old Yellow Springs resident, Wright State University student and law clerk at a Dayton law firm. “He didn’t know the rules and responsibilities. Rather than accept that he was out of his reach, he was more willing to fight than admit he was wrong.”

Borchers said the recorder’s office is need of an upgrade; the office needs to be organized more efficiently, processes need to be streamlined to save time and money for constituents.

The fee charged for commercial users only partially covered the expense of providing the service, Sears said. The recorder’s office absorbed the majority of the cost

“As an unemployed individual with limited experience, I do not think he understands how local government or providing a service to commercial users work,” Sears said. “This is an unmandated service that commercial users asked to be provided. We have had zero complaints and all comments have been complementary.”