Private firm used space in Pierce County Clerk’s Office rent free for more than 30 years
After a recent audit of the Pierce County Superior Court Clerk’s Office found the department had a “significant lack” of financial control and general oversight in 2022, The News Tribune turned up something else: a private title company had been operating within the office for more than 30 years rent free.
As of Dec. 1, 2023, Title Support Services Inc. was removed from the Clerk’s Office space after being allowed to operate there since 1991 without paying rent, county communications director Libby Catalinich told The News Tribune on Tuesday.
Catalinich said the company was billed $56 monthly for phone and fax lines, as well as copies made. It did not have access to documents that were not available to the public, she said.
County Information Technology staff confirmed Title Support Services did not have network or computer access, Catalinich said. A Title Support Services employee had a vendor badge that provided access to the Clerk’s Office but not to other areas, she added.
Shortly after new clerk Constance White started at the county in December 2021, she learned that the title company working in the Clerk’s Office “was a longstanding practice,” Catalinich told The News Tribune in response to questions.
“After this thorough review and in consultation with the Prosecutor’s Office, Constance determined that this unique relationship with a private company was not a prudent or appropriate business practice for the Clerk’s Office and decided to terminate it,” Catalinich wrote in an email. “The owner of the company, Beth Salmon, was informed last summer that she would need to vacate the office her company was using. Ms. Salmon asked to have permission to use the office for another five years, which was denied. She vacated the office by December 1 of last year.”
Multiple requests for comment from Title Support Services Inc. went unanswered Thursday. The company provides services to title companies, attorneys and others in Pierce, King and Thurston counties.
Pierce County lost about $29,000 in rent by allowing Title Support Services Inc. to operate in an 87-square-foot space, Catalinich said.
Pierce County does not typically rent office spaces to private companies, but some building space is leased to private companies like the Crisis Recovery Center in Parkland, she said. Facilities Management handles office space rentals in the county. Catalinich said she did not know of any private companies operating out of county departments and not paying rent.
The county declined to answer a question about why it took more than 30 years to end the arrangement if it was deemed “not a prudent or appropriate business practice” because “this question asks current leaders to explain/rationalize the decisions of previous administrations,” Catalinich said.
“As for why this arrangement was ever put into place, you would need to ask the previous leaders of the Clerk’s Office,” she said.
In a study session before the Pierce County Council April 30, during a discussion of the March audit report, county Executive Bruce Dammeier said he was “candidly shocked” to learn that a private title company had been operating out of the Clerk’s Office for over 30 years without a lease.
Dammeier said the discovery was “just one of many things that [White’s] fresh eyes and expertise” identified as modernization needed in the office.
Theodore Rutt was the clerk from Oct. 18, 1990 to Sept. 28, 2001, Catalinich said. He was followed by Bob Sansoucie, and Kevin Stock was appointed clerk in 2003, she said.
Going forward Pierce County “will monitor any requests for use of County facilities and ensure that an appropriate contract is in place should rental of the space be determined to be a public benefit,” Catalinich said.
Stock told the News Tribune on Wednesday it wasn’t his decision to initially let Title Support Services Inc. operate in the Clerk’s Office, but he kept the practice because it was a better use of staff time and resources. Stock said he believed the company had been operating in the office even prior to 1991.
In his time as clerk, Stock said, the title company made so many requests for public records it took up nearly $100,000 of staff time to complete those requests, a situation made more difficult in a time of fax machines and microfilm. Rather than spend staff time completing sometimes 50 requests a day, staff showed the private employees how to access archived files and use county microfilm readers themselves, he said.
“I think it was a business decision somebody made. They were in the office every day anyway, and I think at some point in time they went from our public space to back behind. I know they got moved around five or six times in the office to different points,” Stock told The News Tribune. “It continued under my term and I never really looked into it because we never had a problem.”
Stock said he believed only one person from the company spent time in the office at a time and said they didn’t have access to nonpublic records. Although he didn’t know the employee personally, he said he saw them daily and trusted staff to monitor them.
“It wasn’t as big of a deal as [White] made it out to be, because like I said, it just was something they’ve been doing forever back in the ‘90s. The process changed from microfilm to imaging in the 2000s, so they still had the need to pull all these files,” he said. “They were either going to be in our lobby, or they were going to be behind the lobby and make more space for the public. So that’s kind of what it turned out to be.”