Ott again battles council over price of title requests

A spat that appeared resolved in April between the County Council and Recorder Gary Ott over what title companies should be charged for record requests heated up again Tuesday.

During a loud discussion in which Council Chairman Steve Harmsen repeatedly had to call for order, the council for a second time set a half-cent-per-record price and basically forced Ott to accept it.

The council voted to do the same thing in April and, in a punitive response to long arguments with Ott then, moved the duty from his office to the tax administration office.

But because formal adoption of the April council vote was somehow overlooked, Ott said he believed he was not bound by it. He continued to deal with the title companies and refused to charge the new price.

"Don't be like other people in the county that we haven't liked," Councilman Randy Horiuchi warned Ott Tuesday.

The comment raised the specter of former county attorney Doug Short, whose dramatic battles with the county commission in the late 1990s resulted in lawsuits, closed meetings, shouting matches, being barred from his office, having his pay slashed and a change in the county's form of government from a commission to a council/mayor.

As a county commissioner at the time, Horiuchi was among of those who locked horns with Short.

By all accounts, the council/Ott skirmish is milder than the commission/Short conflicts, but their character is similar.

Ott wants to charge the companies who use the county information to build property databases what he believes is fair market value — between 1 and 2 cents per record.

With the number of records these companies are requesting, that would augment county coffers by tens of thousands of dollars, he said.

"The market is out there," Ott said. "This would save taxpayer dollars that can be used in other places."

Most of the council members disagree. They believe the county is obligated under the state Government Records Access and Management Act to keep the price of providing the information to a minimum.

The reason for the lack of formal adoption of the April vote varies: it was pulled from the agenda; it was never there in the first place; people forgot about it.

Last week, the council revisited the issue and did so again Tuesday.

It will have to again next week because for unknown reasons, a draft of the final ordinance sent over by deputy district attorney Karl Hendrickson never got into council members' hands. What's more, the item wasn't even included in the formal agenda.

Ott was unapologetic Tuesday.

"I didn't lose," he said. "The people of the county did."

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E-mail: aedwards@desnews.com