This was sent to me by Cath Madden Trindle. I think it is something all genealogists should be aware of. If you can send your representative a message if you care to. Shirley    In reading the two bills listed below, I did not find a problem with the second bill which requires County Recorders to only accept documents for recording that have only the last four digits of the SS#.  It is not retroactive so only affects documents created after it's implementation date in 2010. There is nothing in the bill that changes access to records themselves.    The first bill, however, is a problem.  While adding marriages to the restrictions that currently exist for birth and death records in California it does not provide for a public version of the marriage indexes.  As written it could virtually close off all marriage indexes that are not currently available offsite from public record offices.    We need to contact our legislators and tell them to vote NO.  There is no need to close marriage records, they have always been considered a public record.   The redacting of maiden names of mothers' from indexes is annoying but acceptable, but no index at all is a problem not only for genealogists but more importantly for potential spouses and others who can become victims of the unscrupulous.     (Note: the statement below that the certified copy will say informational only is incorrect.  Like the birth and death certificates today, that truly will be an informational only copy which can be obtained by anyone.  Certified copies will be the only "official documents".  Again this is not a problem as long as the information is not redacted, but that redaction is part of the bill.)   Please contact you legislators immediately.  Perhaps you might hint that they should be solving our budget problems rather than trying to saddle the counties with additional work when they are having to lay off workers do to the economy.  Additionally you might point out that the state still can not fulfill requests for birth and death records in any kind of timely manner and straddling them with yet another mandate is ridiculous.        Cath Cath Madden Trindle, CG FGS Treasurer 650-366-5059  cell 650-207-2747 fax 866-418-1314Catht@aol.com CG, Certified Genealogist, is a service mark of the Board for Certification of Genealogists used under license by board certificants after periodic evaluation. The Federation of Genealogical Societies invites you to join us in Little Rock, AR at our annual National Conference, Sept 2-5, 2009 -- Visit our Web site at http://www.fgs.org. P Please consider the environment before printing this.     From: welliott@Exchange.FULLERTON.EDU To: catht@aol.com Sent: 6/13/2009 10:54:16 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time Subj: FW: [RPAC] California Bills Passed out of houses of origin   ________________________________________ From: jan meisels allen [janmallen@worldnet.att.net] Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2009 6:40 PM To: Elliott-Scheinberg, Wendy Cc: Fred Moss Subject: Fw: [RPAC] California Bills Passed out of houses of origin Wendy You will be getting a call from Fred Moss tonight in your role of CA Alliance due to two CA bills that are a problem and RPAC believes Alliance needs to get involved now.. I will be away starting Friday back Wednesday-no e-mail while I am away. AB 130  has hearing in Assembly Judiciary June 23 passed Assembly  79-0 Something I wrote for IAJGS below Jan: AB 130  adds marriage records to the restrictions on indices already in place for birth and death record indices. Local registrars may only release marriage records without the mother's maiden name. This is already a provision of law for birth and death records . Law enforcement may obtain records with the mother's maiden name. The records are not permitted to be posted on the internet. An additional $1 fee will be levied for those requesting a certified marriage record as of January 2010. Provides that the State Registrar, local registrar or county recorder may provide a certified copy of a marriage record to  an authorized person, as defined, who submits a statement,  sworn under penalty of perjury, that the requester is an  authorized person.  Requires the certified copy to contain the statement "INFORMATIONAL, NOT A VALID DOCUMENT  TO ESTABLISH IDENTITY." This bill passed the California Assembly on June 1, 2009 with a vote of 79-0! It is now in the Senate Rules committee awaiting committee assignment. The bill as originally introduced did not address marriage records but make it a felony with up to 4 years prison time for a second or subsequent conviction of causing identity theft as well as levying a fine. The original bill failed to get out of committee. It was amended later to the current version. http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/09-10/bill/asm/ab_0101-0150/ab_130_bill_20090427_amended_asm_v97.pdf SB 40 would require any document filed with a county recorder that contains more than the last 4 digits of someone's Social Security number to no longer be available to the public.  This bill passed the Senate in late April and will be heard on June 9th in the Assembly Judiciary Committee.  Applies  to documents created after January 1, 2010. http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/09-10/bill/sen/sb_0001-0050/sb_40_bill_20090331_amended_sen_v97.pdf ----- Original Message ----- From: "jan meisels allen" <janmallen@worldnet.att.net> To: <janmallen@worldnet.att.net> Sent: Tuesday, June 02, 2009 8:44 PM Subject: [RPAC] California Bills Passed out of houses of origin AB 130 passed out of the Assembly yesterday. The vote was almost unanimous. AB 130 – Assembly Floor Analysis - Leora Gershenzon / JUD. / (916) 319-2334 wrote the analysis. http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/09-10/bill/asm/ab_0101-0150/ab_130_cfa_20090530_135030_asm_floor.html http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/09-10/bill/asm/ab_0101-0150/ab_130_vote_20090601_1244PM_asm_floor.html SB 40 will be heard on June 9th in the Assembly Judiciary Committee. It alreadypassed out of the Senate.The consultant to talk with is Drew Liebert at (916) 319-2334. His email isdrew.liebert@asm.ca.govJan Meisels Allen Director, IAJGS and Chairperson, Public Records Access MonitoringCommittee   Choose the home loan that saves you the most $$$. Agents available at ditech.com -----Inline Attachment Follows----- _______________________________________________ csga-member mailing list csga-member@csga.com http://csga.com/mailman/listinfo/csga-member_csga.com

I sure hope that would not include death certificates! I'd rather find the entire SS#! Oh, bother. When will they learn that the best guard against identity theft is to change the financial institution requirements regarding using mothers' maiden names for security?! We have blocks enough. Public records should remain PUBLIC. Happy Trails, Lauren