County’s historical records endangered by new demands

(Editor's Note: This is a Vindicator editorial that was published Thursday, Dec. 8., 2011)

The oil and gas rush in the Ma- honing Valley isn’t evident in the fields just yet, but in the county recorders’ offices, where hundreds of title searchers toil day in and day out identifying the current owners of mineral rights, the activity borders on chaos. However, no one in county government is complaining because the smell of money is in the air.

As the stories on the front page of Monday’s Vindicator revealed, the landmen, as they are called, are literally camped out in the courthouses. They’re going through property title books, some bound more than 150 years ago, to track down records for the oil and natural-gas industry. And therein lies the problem, at least in Mahoning County. Not all the researchers — some are employed directly by the drilling companies, while others are hired through subcontractors — are careful when going through documents that are brittle due to age.

As Stacey Adger, president of the Mahoning County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society, sees it, the individuals handling the records don’t have the proper training and, therefore, do not follow commonsense rules, such as using pencils and not pens to take down information, turning the pages from the center of the edge rather than the corner, and not eating and drinking while conducting the searches.

Because county governments do not have the manpower or the money to oversee the landmen eight hours a day, they depend on the honor system, hoping that the public documents will be handled with care.

Given that the title searches have been going on for a year and will continue for the foreseeable future, commissioners in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties need to think about how to handle the flood of residents and nonresidents in the courthouses. It isn’t only about the preservation of documents.

In Mahoning County, researchers have taken over the employees’ lunch room, prompting a sign urging them to keep the space clean.

But commissioners Anthony Traficanti, John McNally and Carol Rimedio-Righetti have decided to be even more accommodating. They are vacating the commissioners’ meeting room in the basement of the courthouse and will use a conference room in Oakhill Renaissance Place. The landmen will be housed in the old meeting room and will be provided work tables and chairs and additional electrical outlets. In other words, Traficanti, McNally and Rimedio-Righetti are bending over backwards to make the things easier.

Photocopies

What is Mahoning County getting in return? Ten cents a page fee for photocopies. In the first nine months of the year, the recorder’s office made $55,000. But the county can realize greater benefit if it follows Columbiana County’s lead and enters into an agreement with one of the drilling companies to digitize records from the recorder’s office.

Columbiana County commissioners have signed a contract with Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy Corp. for $250,000, an investment that will benefit the leading gas and oil driller in this region and county government.

In Mahoning County, there are procedures in place to protect old records — they aren’t permitted to be copied — but as the oil and gas rush gets more intense, county governments in the area must ensure that public property is preserved and that taxpayers aren’t shortchanged.

The drilling companies stand to make a lot of money. They should carry their own weight.