 Hello, welcome to this week's legislative update. I'm Jim Baumgurt. Your host and the co-host, of course, is Nanette Boulebouche from Elkhart Lake. Hi, I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you. And we have a wonderful guest, Nanette Ellen Schreiker, who is the Register of Deeds, and we want to find out for the public, the viewers, the complexity of their job, which is not just registering deeds. It's much, much more. One of the things that my wife uses is your Register of Deeds office for a lot, which is not a main part of your job, and that's genealogy. Some of these people watching, some are older, some are younger, and they do genealogy. How does that work in your office? Well, we do get quite a few genealogists in, and what happens is what we do now is they have to show us identification, fill out a form, tell us who they're looking for. It can't be just, it has to be, they have to name their families or whatever. We keep that form on record for a year, and then they just can just come in and sign in and go back into our vital records room. They can pretty much go through the indexes, find the records that they're looking for, and take down the information that they are looking for. And generally, it might be for health reasons. The death certificates give the reason for death, the cause of death. It could be for looking back for who the parents or grandparents or great-grandparents are. Recently, we've been very busy because the country of Luxembourg is allowing folks to apply for dual citizenship. And I think it's until 2018 they can do that, and so they have to find their great-great grandparents and prove that they were born in Luxembourg and came over here from Luxembourg. So it's been rather active in our office with that, a lot of people that are applying for that dual citizenship. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, anyway, if people want to do some genealogy for whatever reason, do citizenship or just finding out some medical records so that a new family that's starting out knows if some of our ancestors died of breast cancer or something else that might be in the family tree. And so that's good to know. Anyway, so let's clarify. You are located in the county courthouse or in that building next door to it? In the administration building on the corner of 5th and New York. Second floor. Second floor. You were in County. And just give us an all-around brief one-minute summary of what your office does. Well, all land records, any land records are recorded in our office, and that's deeds, mortgages, satisfactions. We have business trade names recorded in our office. We have church chattels. It's interesting, our miscellaneous books, you can look and back and see what businesses were opened in Cheboygan when they closed the church charters or whatever. It's, you know, there's just a mountain of information that's in our records. I mean, they're 1848 forward, so people can go in. A lot of time we get people that come in that they want to know who owned their house before they had it, the history of even their homes. And the title folks use that also. We deal a lot with title people and attorneys who are, you know, looking up past records, past land records. So it's a historian's dream. It is, right. We kind of say we're like the librarians of the county. And, but you also have a very timely function. We know that Wisconsin recently passed some restrictions on voting. We, now we require a photo ID when you vote. And I understand that people can come to your office to prove they are who they are. They often need a birth certificate and that's something you can, you can supply, correct? Tell us about that. Correct. Years ago, probably prior to 2006, they, when they passed the Real ID Act, they didn't need their birth certificates. People didn't need their birth certificates like they do now. Now you need it for just about everything, you know, employment, driver's license, Real ID or the voter ID. And they have to prove if, you know, if you're a woman, female, unfortunately, every time you change your name, you have to have that record. So then you're looking at marriage records that, you know, someone's been married two, three times or anytime there's a name change. It's, they're vital. They really are vital records that are protected and always available in our office. But it's made more difficult to, to get the information so you can get and vote. Correct. Correct. And I think thousands of people have been frustrated because some of the very, very elderly people were, you know, still born at home in some rural area. So there may not be a record, right? Yeah. That could be pretty tough. Some people have lost their franchise, unfortunately. The state, the state does have a way. There are ways they can do that, but you're right. When they're elderly and we've had that a lot where folks need, you know, they decide they're going to get a passport for the first time and they're in their 70s or 80s and their records aren't complete. They have to go through hoops. They have to look for school records. They have to look for baptismal records. They have to have witnesses. So it's difficult. It's doable, but it takes time and it is very, most of our records are pretty good, but years ago sometimes they weren't as complete as what they are now. Well, and if you're 20 or 30, you're, you know, you're agile and, and, you know, sharp and if you're 70, 75 and 80 and you want to go back to the old country to see where your mother was born and it's not worth the effort after a while. So you're really blocked from doing things that you should have a right to do. Yep. Unfortunately. Yeah. But we try and work with them folks pretty much and the state does also. So you're sort of like the first place someone can go and if you cannot help them say they were born in another state, you can at least refer them to somewhere else. Right. We can now issue statewide. So prior to 2017, you had to go back to the county that, that you were born in or your parents were residences to get your birth record. In 2017, as I said, we are able now to issue statewide. So you don't have to go up to Ashland or something to get that. Correct. You don't have to be there in person. Well, that's, that's at least a good thing. Well, I was born in Manitowoc County and a couple of times I needed for service and other reasons, reasons of birth certificate and I had to go up to Manitow. I know you don't have to. I don't have to. You can do it for me. That's a good thing. You are wonderful. Yeah. Well, we try. Yes, you do. You are. We do have one of the things that has been interesting and that is that these offices that the county's run and these individuals are elected individually by the people is the new technology. You've been modernizing and why don't you tell the viewers some of the things that your new technology is cutting costs and saving money? Well, we have, since I came into office, my goal was to digitize or to help preserve the records that we have and get them all on computer. So we have records scanned back to 1935 at the present time. I'm working on getting them all scanned as money is allowed. So the older ones are still in hard copy versions. They're still in hard copy version, but we're going to get them digitized so that it's easier for folks to access those records. We have increased our productivity tremendously. The records that we receive on a daily basis to record generally can be seen the same day on the computer. So where years ago, it was weeks before they could get that access to those records. And that helps the real estate folks as far as selling homes and, you know, keeping that record up to date. Sure. So it's good. But we're working on that. It takes time. It's a long project. You know, it's not something that's done overnight. In the net, one of the things about Ellen's position and their staff, they're one of the only county offices that makes money for the citizens of Siobhan County. You charge a fee and so you cost less than you're taking in. Correct. Because when the sales of houses are up, your income is up and that goes into the general coffers of the county, doesn't it? Correct. Our office actually, the fees that we do charge helps the state also because the state gets more of the fair share than the county does unfortunately. They are a little greedy sometimes. Yes, they are. But we do, we do most of the time very since I've started, we've at least been able to give back, you know, in about excess of about a hundred thousand dollars to that goes into the general fund. And then we have our little fund that on the, you know, the land records that other departments use those dollars to purchase through the flyovers. The time goes so fast in these interviews. We've got like a couple minutes left. What's the most important thing you want people to know about your office? I think that if you want to know anything about what's going on in the county, what went on in the history of the county that our office is your office to come to. We try and get you out speedily. We want you to leave our office happy and not frustrated. And they can find you on the Sheboygan County website, is that correct? Yeah, www.sheboygancounty.com and just go under departments and register a deed. Super. Thank you. Press the button and out you come. Thank you, Ellen. It's been such a pleasure talking to you. Thank you. One of the things that is important is the fact that it's not really important, but you offer a gift certificate, don't you, for people that want to give something, you know, to get married and, you know, you give them gifts so that they can buy their license free. I mean, you can do that, right? Right. Just starting this year. It's new. It's new and I thank the county board for allowing me to do that. But we get folks in our office and I'm just going to use this as a quick example. Gentleman and his wife, wife-to-be came in. He needed his birth certificate. He needed a divorce certificate. Then they had to go down and apply for their marriage license, so then, you know, they got to come back after they're married and get their marriage certificate. So, you know, those costs can add up. And we've had folks come in that, you know, are a little strapped for money and that's probably one of the last things that they want, you know, to spend those dollars on. So we came up with a gift certificate program that if you know someone who's having a baby and they don't need any baby toys or baby, you can come into our office and purchase a gift certificate for a free birth certificate. Oh, I see. To help somebody else. To help somebody else. So for that gift that keeps on giving, that's what we say, you know, Christmas time around. And that's wonderful, Ellen. And we do have to close. We're running out of time again. We do want to thank Ellen Schreiker, who's the registered deeds and, of course, the net bullet bush co-host for joining us and the viewers until next time. This has been Legislative Update.