Three county registers of deeds who were publicly critical of their state association and its role as a pass-through for perks found themselves knocked off an email list for the association's regular update on state legislative matters.
They say they think it's retaliation for their criticism. Kim Hargrove, the association official who was sending the updates, says the three registers of deeds chose to be bumped from the notification list.
Hargrove is Harnett County's register of deeds, and she serves as one of two legislation committee co-chairmen for the N.C. Association of Registers of Deeds. She said in an email response that the three officials did not get the update because "they specifically requested to not deal directly with me as Legislative Co-Chair of NCARD" in a recent data request.
Hargrove recently sent an email to 97 of the state's 100 registers of deeds telling them that state lawmakers were not going to take up legislation fixing a problem created by a law from last session that changed the fees related to records filed with register of deeds offices. The association's president, Wayne Rash, Caldwell County's register of deeds, has acknowledged that the new law has led to higher fees charged for some records, even though the bill was supposed to be as revenue neutral as possible.
The three registers of deeds who were not included in the list are Laura Riddick of Wake County, Craig Olive of Johnston County and Matt McCall of Iredell County. They criticized the association's spending and relationships with vendors in a News & Observer story last September. The story caused the largely publicly funded association to stop paying for two $2,500 college scholarships annually for the relatives of registers of deeds.
Rash said the legislative updates, which he believes to be public records, should be going to all 100 registers of deeds. He said he has told Hargrove that she needs to add Riddick, Olive and McCall back to the email list.
"You'd have to talk to her about what her intentions were," Rash said. "The only thing I can tell you is I have discussed it with her and asked her not to do it again."
Riddick and McCall sent emails to Hargrove seeking to bypass her on the financial data request so they could send the information to the state legislature, which is using it to deal with the fee issue. McCall specifically said in his email he did not trust Hargrove to handle the information.
But none of the three registers of deeds asked to be dropped from the legislative updates.
They won't have to beg Hargrove for them. She said she has turned those duties over to the other legislative co-chairman, Duplin County Register of Deeds Davis Brinson.
 

In letters to us and our sister paper The Charlotte Observer, the president of the N.C. Association of Registers of Deeds criticized our story last week about association spending.

The letter, which you can read here, says the story contained "distortions and half truths."

The letter also notes that the association voted to raise private funds to provide two, $2,500 scholarships each year to the family members of registers of deeds, who are county-elected officials making in some cases more than $100,000 a year. The association members also decided to open the scholarships up to the family members of rank and file employees in the registers of deeds' offices.

As for the conferences, association president Wayne Rash said they are mostly about public business, not having fun. A conference schedule (see PDF below) shows the four-day conference  has no business conducted on Saturday; a golf tournament, reception and banquet on Sunday; a Monday evening cookout at a nearby mountain park; and a reception, banquet and dancing at the conference's close on Tuesday evening.

One of the conference work sessions on Tuesday afternoon was originally entitled: "Today's Technology=Election Wins." One of the speakers confirmed his part of that session was to help registers of deeds use social media to get re-elected. (See second PDF below.)

Much of the association's money comes from dues charged to registers of deeds offices, conference registration fees and contributions from vendors who do business with the officials.

Documents: