AB 1546: Vital records.

Existing law requires the State Registrar to administer the registration of births, deaths, fetal deaths, and marriages. Existing law requires the State Registrar to arrange and permanently preserve the certificates in a systematic manner and to prepare and maintain a comprehensive and continuous index of all certificates registered. Existing law requires that specified birth, death, and marriage record indices prepared or maintained by local registrars and county recorders be kept confidential. Existing law requires, notwithstanding these provisions, local registrars and county recorders to release, when requested, their comprehensive birth, death, and nonconfidential marriage record indices to the State Registrar.

This bill would additionally authorize the local registrar to release birth and death record indices to the county recorder within its jurisdiction for purposes of the preparation or maintenance of the indices of the county recorder. The bill would extend application of specified access restrictions applicable to confidential portions of certificates of live birth to confidential birth record indices.

Existing law prescribes specified personal information to be included on birth, death, and marriage certificates. Under existing law, a certified copy of a birth or death record may only be supplied by the State Registrar, local registrar, or county recorder to an authorized person, as defined, who submits a statement sworn under penalty of perjury that the applicant is an authorized person. Existing law also requires that each certified copy of a birth, death, or marriage record contain specified information and be printed on sensitized security paper with specified security features, including, among others, intaglio print.

This bill would authorize the State Registrar to suspend the use of any security feature if necessary to enable the State Registrar, local registrar, county recorder, or county clerk to supply an applicant with a certified copy of a birth, death, or marriage record. The bill would authorize the State Department of Public Health to implement this provision through all-county letters or similar instructions, as specified.

Existing law requires the State Registrar to appoint a Vital Records Protection Advisory Committee to study and make recommendations to protect individual privacy, inhibit identity theft, and prevent fraud involving birth, death, and marriage certificates while providing needed access to the information contained in those records by persons seeking it for a legitimate purpose.

This bill would require the State Registrar, in consultation with the County Recorders Association of California and other stakeholders, to study all security features for paper used to print a vital record, or alternative security features that are equal to or better than those that are currently mandated. The bill would require the State Registrar to submit a report to the Legislature, on or before January 1, 2018, that contains the findings of that study and legislative recommendations pertaining to those findings.

This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.