Press Release

For Immediate Release	Contact: Caryl Lucas
May 19, 2006	Phone: 609-292-4302

EWING, NJ – Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells joined Karl Niederer, Director of the New Jersey Division of Archives and Records Management (DARM) today to announce more than $27.8 million in 2006 Public Archives and Records Infrastructure Support (PARIS) grants that will help the state’s counties and municipalities consolidate storage space, reduce unnecessary public documents and modernize antiquated filing systems.

Under the PARIS grants, the state’s 21 counties and local municipalities will save an estimated $100 million in direct savings and cost efficiencies, according to Niederer, who presented the grants with Wells following a public meeting of the State Records Committee at the State Records Center in Ewing.

“PARIS enables New Jersey’s counties and municipalities to adopt 21st-century technologies to drive down the cost of government records creation, maintenance and storage, while expanding public access,” said Secretary Wells. “Through PARIS, the strategic investment of $27.8 million in building and improving the infrastructure of local records administration yields up to four times that sum in direct savings and cost-efficiencies statewide.”

“PARIS grants are transforming New Jersey’s county and local government operations for the better by building and improving the infrastructure of records administration, and every service provided by government to citizens depends on records,” Niederer said. “By centralizing and coordinating the storage of public records, our counties and municipalities operate more efficiently. The bottom line is government that functions more efficiently, effectively, and responsively costs taxpayers less than government that is inefficient, ineffective and unresponsive.”

Niederer said the grants also provide resources for local county governments to implement electronic filing and document imaging systems resulting in an estimated average savings of $25.2 million in savings statewide. By consolidating county and municipal records and storage county services, the state’s 21 counties will achieve savings of up to $31.5 million through establishing individual records management services. The identification and destruction of unnecessary records with expired retention periods in the state’s 566 municipalities will result in $23 million in savings in storage costs. Under the grant program, counties and municipalities also will have funds to implement electronic backup filing systems in case of a regional disaster to prevent the loss of important records and yield a savings of $31.5 million in salvage costs.

The PARIS program, which was launched in 2005, is funded by fees collected by county clerks and registers for the recording of certain documents, including deeds and mortgages.  A portion of these funds (40 percent) are reserved annually for the local government records management grant program.

Now in its second year of operation, the Public Archives and Records Infrastructure Support (PARIS) program offers grants to dramatically improve the quality, efficiency and security of local public recordkeeping in New Jersey. For the first time in history, New Jersey’s counties and municipalities have been able to access state grant funding for cutting edge records technology, including electronic imaging, filing and indexing equipment. The grants are also used for county-wide records management assessments, staff training and the i mplementation of regional disaster preparedness infrastructure workshops on electronic backup systems for public documents.

For a complete listing of 2006 PARIS grants to counties and municipalities visit http://www.njarchives.org/links/paris-awards-fy06.html.