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Paper will be thing of past when e-notaries get rolling

Paper will be thing of past when e-notaries get rolling

Pioneers in the world of electronic bureaucracy have staked out new territory in the Westmoreland County courthouse. But Pennsylvania's e-notary system is so new even those certified to use it aren't sure just how it works.

Still, hopes are high at the Recorder of Deeds office in Greensburg. Westmoreland is one of only four Pennsylvania counties equipped to process electronic documents marked with the new notary technology. (The others are Chester, Lancaster and Philadelphia.)

"The company that's handling the software is just now talking to the attorneys and banks and lenders who deal with us in Westmoreland County," said Recorder of Deeds Tom Murphy. "Soon as they're signed on, we'll be processing mortgage and ownership documents completely without paper, with all the monetary exchanges happening online.

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"It will save labor, paper, travel and wear-and-tear on office machines. The deeds will be recorded faster, the transactions will move so much more smoothly. And borrowers will get their money a lot faster, too."

So far, Mr. Murphy has signed up only one notary approved by the Pennsylvania Department of State to do business with Westmoreland. Eight more are still in the approval stage.

First in line was Lorie Polansky, of Altoona, who runs Seals On Wheels, a traveling notary service that covers Western and Central Pennsylvania.

" I like being on the cutting edge," she said. "As of Feb. 2, I was one of only 26 notaries approved [by the Department of State] to do this ... and I'm the only one so far certified in Westmoreland."

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Notaries are state-sanctioned witnesses, officials whose stamp and seal authenticate signatures on legal documents.

Now, when a Pittsburgh bank is financing a mortgage on a house in Latrobe, the bank can send all the legal documents in electronic form to the closing in, say, Bedford. With Ms. Polansky watching, the buyer can "sign" the computerized mortgage documents using an electronic signature pad like those in markets and drugstores, or a biometric device like a fingerprint reader.

Ms. Polansky will then notarize the signature using a coded "seal" she carries in a finger-sized data stick that attaches to a computer's USB port. A unique notary code is encrypted onto the electronic documents; any later tampering with their contents is immediately apparent.

Once all the documents are in order, the borrower hits "send" and copies go immediately to the bank, the Westmoreland Recorder of Deeds office, and all other people party to the sale.

"No travel. No inch-thick stack of paper. All the funds transfer from one bank account to the other electronically. Within a few years everyone else will be doing it this way too," Mr. Murphy said.

Neither Ms. Polansky nor Mr. Murphy has yet seen exactly what an electronically notarized document looks like. They haven't used the technology.

"Give me a month," Mr. Murphy said. "They'll start trickling in."

The real estate application is just the start, he said. Auto title transfers, wills, passports, adoption papers and a mountain of other types of red tape all require notarizing.

"We're at a historic forefront," Ms. Polansky said. "Some other states have versions of this, but nothing of this caliber. This has a national interface."

The world is watching, and world-class bureaucracies as far away as Europe want to know how the e-notary idea works out.

"When we rolled out the program in Philadelphia [in early February], there were people there from all over," Mr. Murphy said. "There were even observers from The Hague, in the Netherlands."

Meantime, Ms. Polansky said she hopes to tell the Blair County Board of Commissioners "it's time to catch up to the neighbors in Greensburg."

The e-notary idea is 3 years old, Mr. Murphy said. The four-county pilot program will last a year and, it is hope, will expand to other counties as system users multiply and paperwork-loving institutions grow accustomed to the technology.

Westmoreland's row offices are known for their pioneering ways. The clerk of courts office helped write the book on centralized electronic criminal records, and civil court listings are available around the clock on a county-run Web site. Not all the innovations are so successful: a recent foray into electronic voting machine technology has the county's Election Bureau mired in a lawsuit.

"Slowly but surely you learn what works and what doesn't," Mr. Murphy said. "But wait till the real estate lawyers out on the other side of the county learn they can file a deed without schlepping into Greensburg. ... I expect to see this technology spread out over all aspects of e-commerce and create some new kinds of businesses we haven't seen before."

First Published: March 9, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

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