Two in running for Sullivan County Register of Deeds

How the Sullivan County’s Register of Deeds office uses technology to keep track of the documents that fall under its purview has become a key issue in a race that puts a 35-year incumbent up against a county commissioner who is trying to oust her from office.

In an interview about her re-election campaign this week, Democrat Mary Lou Duncan said she is very proud of how her staff scanned almost 250 years worth of documents and posted them to her office’s new website in January.

But Republican Bart Long, a county commissioner from Bristol, Tenn., said the work was too little, too late and is the main reason he is running against Duncan in the Aug. 5 election. Early voting for that contest started last week and will run until July 31.

According to the Tennessee Code Annotated, a county’s register of deeds is responsible for keeping track of several different types of documents including deeds, mortgages and judgments. The person holding this office in Sullivan County earns $80,474 a year.

Mary Lou Duncan

First elected to office in 1974, the 69-year-old Mary Lou Duncan has been Sullivan County’s Register of Deeds for nearly half of her life and said she has loved every minute of it.

“I have enjoyed these 35 years immensely because of the wonderful folks who live in Sullivan County,” she said this week in an interview about her re-election plans.

Duncan said her most recent accomplishment involves scanning every record in her office – some dating to 1770 –  and putting them up on her office’s new website.

The project involved going through 5,200 books of deeds and judgments and creating more than 4 million images. The work was done in house using the office’s current staff; a step that Duncan said saved the county’s taxpayers $300,000.

“The people in Sullivan County don’t need to be paying any more taxes with the economy the way that it is,” the incumbent register of deeds said, explaining why her office chose to do the work in house rather than hire a private contractor.

Duncan said economic considerations also are one of the reasons why her office is putting its plans to establish an electronic filing system on hold.

Though it would save people money because they’d be able to file their documents at the register of deed’s office without traveling there in person, Duncan said, it also could threaten the jobs of people who work as couriers and get paid to file the documents at her office. She’s also worried that an electronic filing system could allow people to file fraudulent documents at the register of deeds office.

“We want to make sure it is right for Sullivan County and right for the taxpayers,” Duncan said, explaining her reservations. Only 13 of Tennessee’s 95 counties have an electronic filing system, she said.

Bart Long

Bart Long, a 33-year-old Sullivan County commissioner from Bristol, Tenn., has one critique of how Sullivan County’s register of deeds office operates.

“Our office is extremely behind the times and we ought to bring ourselves in line with some of the other counties in the state,” Long, a Republican, said this week in an interview about his campaign to be the county’s next register of deeds.

Long criticized Duncan for not moving fast enough in her work scanning the office’s records and putting them up on the Internet.

Several other counties in Tennessee started posting copies of those documents on-line many years ago, Long said, adding that the delay in launching Sullivan County’s website inconvenienced several of the region’s attorney and others who needed to do work.

“It’s very cost-effective for attorneys to do their work on-line rather than drive to certain places,” Long said. If Duncan had updated her website earlier, he said, it could have saved these attorneys from driving to her offices to file their documents in person.

Long also said the delay has prevented Duncan from opening a satellite office in Kingsport. The register of deeds currently has offices in Blountville and in Bristol, Tenn., that house its documents tied to properties in those parts of the county.

He said not having that additional satellite office further inconveniences people who need to use the services because most of the county’s parcels of land are inside the Kingsport city limits or on the county’s western end.

Long lives in Bristol, Tenn., and has spent the past 10 years running Bart Long Realty and Associates, a realty and auction firm based out of Bristol, Va.

He has represented voters in the Anderson Elementary School Precinct in Bristol, Tenn., on the 24-member Sullivan County Commission since August 2008 and is abandoning that seat to challenge Duncan in August.

gmclean@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2518