Opinion ID: 1236340
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Auditor's Duties Under the Statute

Text: In addition to his constitutional duties, the State Auditor shall ex officio be state commissioner of delinquent and nonentered lands. W. Va.Code § 11A-3-33 (1994). The auditor is empowered, and it shall be his duty, through the land department in his office, to administer and carry into execution the laws with reference to such lands. The auditor on behalf of the state shall have power to hold and manage such lands, and to exercise all other powers incident to the powers and duties conferred upon him by this article. Id. In order to carry out these duties, the Auditor appoints deputy commissioners to act as his agents. W. Va.Code § 11A-3-34 (1994). Once the sheriff has attempted a sale, any property not purchased at the sale is certified to the Auditor, pursuant to W. Va.Code § 11A-3-8 (1994). [24] If no party steps forward to redeem such a property within 18 months after certification, the land may be sold by a deputy commissioner. W. Va.Code § 11A-3-42 (1994). The Code requires the Auditor to create a list of all such properties and to submit a copy of this list to the county clerk of each county. In so doing, the Auditor certifies this list to deputy commissioners in preparation for sale. W. Va.Code § 11A-3-44 (1994). The Code requires the deputy land commissioner to sell the properties on the list at auction. Each tract or lot certified to the deputy commissioner pursuant to the preceding section shall be sold by the deputy commissioner at public auction at the courthouse of the county to the highest bidder between the hours of ten in the morning and four in the afternoon on any business working day within one hundred twenty days after the auditor has certified the lands to the deputy commissioner as required by the preceding section. W. Va.Code § 11A-3-45(a) (1995). The only notice requirement that applies to the Auditor is contained in the next section, which requires the Auditor to publish notice of an impending deputy commissioner's sale. Once a week for three consecutive weeks prior to the auction required in the preceding section, the deputy commissioner shall publish notice of the auction as a Class III-0 legal advertisement in compliance with the provisions of article three, chapter fifty-nine of this code, and the publication area for such publication shall be the county. W. Va.Code § 11A-3-46 (1995). After the sale, the deputy commissioner submits a report to the Auditor who then approves of each sale unless he finds a sale not to be in the best interests of the state, in which case he will disapprove of the sale. W. Va.Code § 11A-3-51 (1995). The point at which a party has the obligation to mail or deliver personal notice occurs after the deputy land commissioner's sale. Even after a sale, the original owner still has an opportunity to redeem the property by paying the taxes. Once someone has purchased a property at that sale, the new purchaser has an obligation to identify those parties entitled to redeem the property before that new purchaser can receive a deed to the property. (a) Within forty-five days following the approval of the sale by the auditor pursuant to section fifty-one of this article, the purchaser, his heirs or assigns, in order to secure a deed for the real estate purchased, shall: (1) Prepare a list of those to be served with notice to redeem and request the deputy commissioner to prepare and serve the notice as provided in sections fifty-four and fifty-five of this article; and (2) deposit, or offer to deposit, with the deputy commissioner a sum sufficient to cover the costs of preparing and serving the notice. W. Va.Code § 11A-3-52(a) (1995). The deputy land commissioner then takes the purchaser's list and mails a notice prepared in accordance with W. Va.Code § 11A-3-55 (1995) to every person on the list. In the event that no one comes forward to redeem the property before the deadline given in the notice, the deputy commissioner conveys a deed for the property to the new purchaser pursuant to W. Va.Code § 11A-3-59 (1995). Nothing in the record suggests that Auditor Gainer or Deputy Commissioner Sluss failed to comply with any of these requirements. Essentially, the only way that the Redevelopment Authority may successfully challenge the conveyance of the deed to the new purchaser is to show that the Redevelopment Authority should have been on the list prepared pursuant to W. Va.Code § 11A-3-52 (1995) of those to be served with notice to redeem. However, the record reflects that, as of the time of the deputy land commissioners sale, the Redevelopment Authority had not given constructive notice of its standing by filing a lis pendens, nor had it served the Auditor or Deputy Commissioner Sluss with the complaint in its condemnation action. The Redevelopment Authority made the argument below, and the judge agreed, that either the phone calls and letters exchanged between counsel for the Authority and an employee of the Auditor's office, or the communications between the Authority and the State Department of Tax and Revenue were sufficient, in lieu of proper notice to the Auditor or proper recordation of the pending action. We are not persuaded by this argument. It is true that counsel for the Redevelopment Authority called the Auditor's office and spoke with an employee about the Green property. It is true that the employee then faxed to the Redevelopment Authority a document showing the taxes and fees due on the property. But we cannot equate this interaction with filing proper notice in the courthouse or properly serving the Auditor with a complaint in the condemnation action. While this might have been, and probably was, sufficient to give the Authority actual knowledge of the pendency of the tax collection process, it was not sufficient to convert the Authority into an entity entitled to service of formal notice under the statute. A purchaser of the property at the Auditor's sale is required to assemble a list of parties who hold some interest in the property. The purchaser must make a diligent search of public records to identify interested parties. If we allow a call to the office to equal notice, then we place upon the Auditor (and presumably every sheriff) the near impossible burden of creating a duplicate system of recordation of property interests for people who called in, which the purchaser would also have to search to find additional interested parties. This we will not do. Nor are we in agreement that the Redevelopment Authority's communications with the Department of Tax and Revenue constituted any sort of notice to the Auditor. As the Department correctly informed counsel for the Redevelopment Authority, there is no direct or departmental connection between the offices. We are not inclined to find that communicating with the Department of Tax and Revenue is the legal or practical equivalent of service of notice on the Auditor, or can in any way affect the Auditor's sale of the property. In sum, we are not sympathetic to the Redevelopment Authority's arguments; the Redevelopment Authority did not properly record its interest in the clerk's office; it did not follow the proper procedures to provide the Sheriff with notice of its interest; it did not serve the Auditor or his Deputy Commissioner with the complaint in the condemnation action, and, perhaps most significantly, it did not pay the taxes, or arrange with the Green heirs to pay the taxes, even though it had actual knowledge that the property was delinquent and subject to sale by the Auditor almost a year before the property was sold at auction.