Effect of recording deeds

I would assume most States would have such a law in place.  As we oldtimers used to say in the outhouse:  The job ain't done until the paperwork is finished.  In this case, the official recording of the deed.  

However, the owner of Lot 10 caused the problem by not using what he knew to be a correct description on the deed to Cone.  If this was a critical issue to the City, in this case, I would think they could sue the individual who they paid for the deed.  Attorneys could argue both sides of that issue, using the general case rather than the specific case.  Thirty days delay in recording the deed is probably not that uncommon of a situation.  Eleven years is just plain stupid.

Common people operate on common sense.  Government does not.  While working on a limited basis for my home County. I provided them with a description to be used so that a railroad would deed to the County a portion of abandoned railroad land.  The railroad was storing unneeded rail cars along a portion of the abandoned railroad but not where the County needed the land, nor further down the old track. I was present when the negotiations with the railroad were carried out.  I was in the weekly Commission Meeting on the day they officially accepted the deed.  A couple of years or more later while working on a private survey nearby I noticed that deed had not been recorded.  I went to the County Clerk, who was not the same County Clerk as when the deed was accepted, to inquire where the deed was.  Poor guy spent too much time trying to find the deed but was successful eventually.  The north wall of his office was the south wall of the Register of Deeds Office.  It was like pulling hen's teeth to get the railroad to agree to deed the parcel in the first place.  I was not amused.

In city government there is a very fine line between allowing things to happen based on common sense and (the appearance of) allowing the good old boys network to run wild.  That is why there has to be a set of rigidly applied rules. Which sometimes don't fit the particular circumstances very well. So it goes.

This is not a case of a misapplication of common sense. It is a case of simple incompetence. While this particular situation is unique, to me, there are a multitude of such "situations" in my fair city with a genesis in the 1980's.

One thing I have witnessed with both city and county business involves the "official job description" of the various officials.  Checks and balances, you might say. One or more officials perform their function for a certain action quite well.  Then they must hand it off to a different official, who has not been involved so far.  Many times it has been that last official who screws up everything.  In the case mentioned above, it was the County Clerk, who as Secretary to the County Commission, neglected to walk forty feet to record the deed.  He had no involvement in the effort made to obtain the deed, so it was an insignificant issue to him.  I contacted him about this even though he no longer worked for the county.  He told me that he had walked the deed to the Register of Deeds office where they said they would need paid for the registration fee.  He thought that office would merely charge it to their own account.  He told me he had laid the deed aside to ask the Commissioners at their next meeting for which account the check should be assessed to and then forgot all about it.

When I spoke of incompetence it was not the incompetence of an individual I was referring to. It was organizational incompetence. During the period about 20 years either side of 1980 this city grew from about 15 blocks each way of isolated suburban area, surrounded by farmland, into a fully developed 20 square miles. The organization is still catching up.      

Ours is similar- that’s why we’re called race states.

Oh, yes.  Institutional incompetence is maximized in government contracting circles.  My personal experience with this forty years had some new version of this almost daily.  One simple example.  A union lawn mower operator would be in need of a new air filter for his mower.  He could not simply drive four miles to the local shop where the mower was purchased and pickup what he needed.   No No No  He had to fill out a requisition form to be signed by his department head.  That would be placed in the out box to be picked up by a courier to go to the administration building to be delivered to the purchasing department. A specific purchasing agent would be assigned to the task.  That person would send bid requests to a dozen providers with a due date.  On that date, the purchasing agent would open all bid envelopes (one or two maybe) to find a two cent difference.  Eventually, the lawnmower operator received the filter needed three weeks earlier.