HBA-CMT C.S.H.B. 370 77(R)BILL ANALYSIS Office of House Bill AnalysisC.S.H.B. 370 By: Hinojosa County Affairs 4/17/2001 Committee Report (Substituted) BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Currently, a number of county records are deteriorating and are in need of preservation. C.S.H.B. 370 provides for a fee to be imposed for filing public documents in county clerk offices in counties adjacent to an international boundary for the purpose of preserving, restoring, and managing certain county records. RULEMAKING AUTHORITY It is the opinion of the Office of House Bill Analysis that this bill does not expressly delegate any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, department, agency, or institution. ANALYSIS C.S.H.B. 370 amends the Local Government Code to authorize the commissioners court of a county adjacent to an international border to adopt as part of the county's annual budget a records archive fee of not more than $5 for the preservation and restoration services performed by the county clerk in connection with maintaining a county clerks record archive. The fee must be set and itemized in the county's budget as part of the budget preparation process. The fee is required to be paid at the time a person, excluding a state agency, presents a public document to the county clerk for recording or filing. The fee is to be deposited in a separate records archive account in the general fund of the county. The bill requires the county clerk to prepare an annual written plan for funding the preservation and restoration of the county clerk's records archive, and sets forth provisions regarding approval by the commissioners court of the plan and the county clerk's compliance with the plan. The bill sets forth publishing requirements for the commissioners court to give notice of a hearing on the proposed plan. The fee is to be used only for the preservation and restoration of the county clerk's archive and is prohibited from being used to purchase, lease, or develop computer software to geographically index public records, but can be used to index public records by lot and block description on microfilm. Any excess funds generated from the collection of a fee remaining after completion of a county records archive preservation and restoration project are to be used only for specific records management and preservation purposes. The provisions of this bill expire on September 1, 2008. EFFECTIVE DATE September 1, 2001. COMPARISON OF ORIGINAL TO SUBSTITUTE C.S.H.B 370 modifies the original bill by restricting the provisions of the bill to counties that are adjacent to an international boundary. The substitute provides that any fee established under the bill is considered to be part of the county's annual budget and must be set and itemized in the county's annual budget. The substitute requires the commissioners court to publish notice of a public hearing on an annual written plan for funding the preservation and restoration of the county clerk's archive in a newspaper of general circulation in the county no later than the 15th day before the date of the hearing.