Tuesday, April 27, 2010

California Secretary of State Processing Times

California Secretary of State business entity filing times have soared since the first of the year, as a result of the state budget crisis and resulting budget and staff cuts at the Secretary of State's office (which included the closing of some regional offices).

Alas, the Secretary of State also failed to notify practitioners or the general public about these changes before the fact, resulting in unexpected delays to the tune of 6-8 week turnaround for business entity (LLC, corporation, etc.) filings by mail and standard over-the-counter expedited filing times increasing to three weeks and sometimes more from an average of less than two.

Belatedly, the SOS issued this apologetic announcement earlier this month:

http://www.sos.ca.gov/business/pdf/processing-times.pdf [subsequently updated in 2011 to provide an update on the progress the SOS is making to work through these issues]