FARMINGTON — A response to a public records request by a business is expected from the county’s attorney before Thursday, the date the business gave for some contact or a response or it will make an appeal to the Maine Superior Court.

MacImage of Maine LLC plans to expand its www.RegistryofDeeds.com Web site to provide access to all land records in Maine. The company’s Freedom of Access Act request is for inspection and
copying of all electronic land records in the possession of or under
the control of the county’s registry of deeds.

After obtaining copies of the requested records, MacImage intends to
provide access to those documents on its Web site, John Simpson,
general manager wrote in his initial request. According to MacImage,
all Maine counties now have registry Web sites but there is no one Web
site which provides fast and efficient access to all land records in
the state.

Franklin County commissioners met in executive session Monday with attorney Frank Underkuffler to address legal compliance to the request, Commissioner Gary McGrane said. The meeting was held in regard to a second letter received Friday from an attorney for MacImage of Cumberland.

The second letter sent by Sigmund D. Schutz stated MacImage had “received neither the requested records nor an estimate of the total cost of obtaining those records.”

Register Susan Black discussed the request dated Sept. 25 with commissioners at a board meeting on Oct. 6 and on that date Black responded to MacImage to acknowledge receipt of the letter but told the company time was needed to consider the request and “what a reasonable fee would be,” she wrote. The county also had to consider whether the registry office was capable of producing “such a vast amount of data.”

In the letter received Friday, Schutz reminded Black that under Maine’s FOAA, denial to inspect or copy a public record must be “made in writing, stating the reason for the denial, within five working days of the request.”

MacImage’s request was made 21 days ago, as of Friday, and Schutz requested a prompt reply while stating that MacImage understood the county’s concerns relating to the request and restated the company’s commitment to working with the county.

“If, however, the county does not contact MacImage to discuss these issues or otherwise respond in good faith to MacImage of Maine’s FOAA request before Oct. 29, then MacImage will consider its request denied and appeal that denial to Maine Superior Court,” Schutz wrote.

“The county will respond before Thursday,” said Underkuffler, the county’s attorney, after the meeting.

A Hancock County Superior Court justice recently sided with MacImage, stating that that county’s charge of $1.50 per page for electronic copy of its registry of deeds was excessive and violated state law.

A per-page fee as charged by most counties would not be a reasonable fee
for a request that includes thousands of pages of electronically
scanned land records, according to a recent court case, MacImage of
Maine v. Hancock County, Schutz wrote.

MacImage is willing to pay a reasonable fee for copying the records. A ‘reasonable fee’ as defined by the Hancock case could include the cost of staff time and materials such as DVD disks required to comply with the request, Simpson wrote. 

Black charges $1 per page for a hard copy of a deed. Those using the county Web site can view documents electronically at no charge, although some counties do charge, she said, but if they want to print copies, they have to subscribe and pay an annual fee of $150.

On average, that service can produce about $42,000 in copy fees each year for the county, Black said.

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