Hi Again Everybody:

I hadn't heard anything about new contract for SBA/FEMA. When I left, they had negotiated with SBA/FEMA to perform that kind of work, but SBA had said that they were not interested in pursueing an agreement. SBA had decided to keep the work internally. That was January of 2005.

The January 2005 agreement that CMS had hammered out with SBA before SBA pulled the plug was that SBA would pay a set fee (per state, up front with the SBA application) for a specific type of search package (by value of the property) and recording. CMS had developed a customized program to determine the cost of the package, the recording fee applicable, the weighted average of field abstractor fees by county, with the internal operational costs and a small but appropriate profit margin built in (I know, I wrote it). That way on any SBA product, both CMS and the field abstractor or company was guarenteed to be paid, and there wouldn't be any wrangling about cost from SBA or the SBA's designated bank. Plus it meant that the accounting dept couldn't pull any BS about having to wait for payment. It was work performed, work approved, 30-day pay to field company, period.

Beyond that, though, I have no knowledge of any agreement between CMS and SBA from then until now.

The information I have on management and business operations is only current up until June of 2005, when the associates I had in management working there moved on to other companies. I know that around that time, the CMS president resigned over a business disagreement with the owner. Both AccuData and CMS were owned by one individual, but he was effectively in abstensia. One of his daughters was a high level manager (operations manager?) at Accudata, and some of the decisions she was making I believe was part of the disagreement between the CMS President and the AccuData/CMS Owner.

The instruments that were on shelves collecting dust were ReFi mortgages, where Chase got the recording fee or county tax wrong, and then wouldn't correct it in order to have the document filed, and some where they never sent county recording fees at all. It's the curse of a low level assistant accountant at Chase with no knowlege of how county governments work saying, just do it and we'll reimburse you. Those of us who have actually done the work know that the county says "No. Pay us or it doesn't happen." I know that a few times, CMS did front the money on mortgage recording fees Chase claimed were absolutely critical to be filed, and then didn't get reimbursed. After a few of those they put a "No reinbursement" policy into place. While CMS could (and actually rarely did) write title insurance, we didn't write the title insurance for those mortgages. CMS was just the service company either performing the groundwork themselves or subcontracting the workload out to field abstractors or companies.

I hope this helps clear up any questions from my previous post.

Sincerely,
Charles W. Skinner

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