Battle lines drawn as two bid to be county recorder

Jeff Schweers

Wednesday, May 6, 1998 | 9:49 a.m.

Local title company executive Micki Johnson has announced her bid to unseat County Recorder Judy Vandever, who is seeking a second term for the office responsible for filing hundreds of thousands of legal documents.

Johnson, 48, filed as a Republican for the office Tuesday, one day after Vandever, a Democrat, filed.

Vandever, 56, is seeking a second term as recorder. Vandever has 19 years with the recorder's office and was assistant director to Joan Swift when she resigned in 1994, clearing the way for Vandever to run.

Johnson, a commercial account manager with Fidelity National Title and Las Vegas resident for 15 years, said she wants to restore customer service and bring a business approach to the recorder's office.

"Right now there is a very adversarial role between the office and its customer base," Johnson said. "I want to change that."

The recorder's office handles hundreds of thousands of document filings a year, mostly land titles and marriage licenses.

Vandever said she gets letters daily praising her office's customer service and that Johnson's "customer base" is the title companies who want their preferred filing status reinstated.

"She's coming from the perspective of title companies. They're angry," said Vandever, who met with title companies over the past few weeks and was told they want their privileged recordings back.

When Vandever first took office, title companies were allowed to come into the office before it opened to the general public and record their documents. That gave title companies a timing advantage in a race-to-record state when legal disputes of ownership arose.

But after she received an opinion from District Attorney Stewart Bell that the practice was illegal, Vandever stopped doing it.

Vandever said she would campaign on her experience and improved customer service. She said the turn-around time for checking parcel and subdivision maps has been reduced from 10 days to less than 24 hours and her staff has reduced a 30-day indexing backlog.

But in March, Vandever suffered a blow when the state Ethics Commission censured Vandever for misleading the panel when it questioned her about her use of public money to pay for postage in a Chamber of Commerce campaign.

The vote was not unanimous. Ethics vice-chairwoman Helen Chisolm said she didn't think Vandever misled the board.