HOUSE BILL REPORT

HB 1264

BYRepresentatives Nealey, Haugen, Ferguson, McLean, Horn, Cooper and Moyer

Changing provisions relating to local registrars.

House Committe on Local Government

Majority Report:  The substitute bill be substituted therefor and the substitute bill do pass.  (14)

      Signed by Representatives Haugen, Chair; Cooper, Vice Chair; Ferguson, Ranking Republican Member; Horn, Nealey, Nelson, Nutley, Phillips, Raiter, Rayburn, Todd, Wolfe, Wood and Zellinsky.

House Staff:Steve Lundin (786-7127)

AS REPORTED BY COMMITTEE ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT FEBRUARY 7, 1989

BACKGROUND:

Local registrars of vital documents (i.e., local health officers) are authorized to sign fully completed birth certificates and to issue burial-transit permits for fully completed death and fetal death certificates.  When such records of certificates are made pursuant to requirements established by the state registrar (the secretary of the department of social and health services), the certificates become official.

On or before the tenth day of each month local registrars are required to forward to the state registrar the original of these certificates that were so recorded in the preceding month.  The health officer of a first-class city can require two original certificates to be filed and may retain one of the duplicate original certificates as the city record.

Certified copies of these certificates can be issued by the local registrar while the original is in the registrar's possession. Certified copies of these certificates can be made by the state registrar.

SUMMARY:

SUBSTITUTE BILL:  Local registrars shall transmit all original death, and fetal death, certificates to the state registrar no less than 30 days after the certificates are filed, nor more than 60 days after the certificates are filed.  On or before the fifteenth day and the last day of each month, each local registrar must transmit all original birth certificates that have been filed on or before the preceding day that have not been transmitted previously.  When the state registrar requests the transfer of a certificate, the local registrar shall transfer the record immediately.

Local registrars in counties in which a first-class city or a city with a population of 27,000 or more is located may retain an exact copy of the original birth, death, or fetal death certificate and make certificated copies of the exact copy.

SUBSTITUTE BILL COMPARED TO ORIGINAL:  (1) The time period was lengthened within which original death and fetal death certificates must be transmitted.  (2) Requirements were added for transmittal of birth certificates twice a month.  (3)  The size of the city located in a county was increased that gives the county health department the authority to keep an exact copy of original certificates.

Fiscal Note:      Not Requested.

House Committee ‑ Testified For:    Representative Darwin Nealey, Prime Sponsor; and Patricia Wilkins, Department of Social and Health Services.

House Committee - Testified Against:      None Presented.

House Committee - Testimony For:    (1)  This is a compromise bill with the Department of Social and Health Services.  (2) It allows a longer time period for counties to hold the original death certificates, and thereby make certified copies.  (3) It requires birth certificates to be transmitted twice a month to speed the gathering of health statistics by the state.  (4) This legalizes the decades old practices of some county health departments to retain exact copies of certificates from which certified copies may be made.

House Committee - Testimony Against:      None Presented.