Wayne Coates told me his office has generated 3.5 Million so far this year in copy/recording fees but his yearly budget was just set at $1,060,400. So yes, the Recorder's Office is generating a lot of profit. The problem, according to Wayne, is the County Commissioners are taking too much of the profit to fund other County projects. I don't think this is Wayne's fault. He has done a great job keeping great service until now with half his normal size staff but he warned me it's about to go downhill and he says he has no way to stop it. So as a final move he put out this memo to the general public explaining he has no choice but to close on Fridays and said to direct any questions about it to the Commissioners. Clearly, this is a political fight.

 In any event, I find it ridiculous that we, the customers of the Recorder's Office paid $3.5 million in fees and the Recorder now has to shut down on Fridays because their budget was set at just reduced to a little over 1 million. I have more than a few full time employees that work in Hamilton County and they are salaried positions so I'm really not sure how we will address this problem yet.  It's going to hurt us and a lot of others. We have to get them to reverse this decision somehow quickly.