A FORMER EMPLOYEE SPEAKS OUT: PART 1

We at Clerk of Court Watch, received the following email from a former employee of that office. This really backs up much of what we have said in the past…and much more! This article stems from a comment left by this former employee in this article, and the request I made to this person here. This email really speaks for itself:

“I worked in the Erie County Clerk of Courts office for many years. I left the office before the 2008 election. During that time, I continually witnessed the office spiral out of control due to Barb Johnson’s lack of caring, lack of motivation, and lack of experience. I would like to make the following points about the COC office and how it is run under Barb Johnson:

1) According to State Law, a public official only needs to be in their office 1 day out of 90. Barb Johnson is paid $55,000 a year, and she was hardly ever in her office. There were many, many times where she would call the office shortly after we opened for the day and say that she would be in around 10:00, or 11:00 and wouldn’t come in until 3:30 or even 3:50 just so she could say she was in that day (Editors Note: the office closes at 4:00). She was hardly ever in the office. I realize that during a portion of that time that she was the sole care-giver of her ailing dad, and husband. I heard her say numerous times something to the effect, “I’m so glad I have this job that allows me to stay at home and care for him,” which I wanted to respond, “Yeah, would you allow any of us girls to do the same? I don’t think so!” As you have mentioned on your web site in the past, she has robbed the tax payers, because who among us could work so little and still get paid their full salary? Why is it OK for her to do that and still receive a full salary, but not OK for any of the other office workers? My feeling was, if she needed to stay at home and take care of her ailing father and husband, she should have retired to do so – she definitely had the years in to retire. According to your website, she is in almost everyday, but not getting any work done (why doesn’t that surprise me).

2) It also seems from your web site that her attendance record is much improved, yet she still is not doing anything to “manage or lead” (as you have stated in the past) the office. This sounds like Johnson, because she was out of the office so much, when she was there, she had no idea what to do about anything. Due to her poor attendance record, she did not run the office very effectively and with virtually no supervision, leaving her staff to fend on their own. She did not even have a Chief Deputy Clerk position authorized in her staffing to manage and supervise her office. She did have a supervisor and an assistant supervisor in the office, but they were there in name only because they had absolutely no power to do anything. There were a few times where I saw that she had reprimanded a supervisor over something that the supervisor had handled correctly, but it seems that Barb wanted to exert her “power” and belittle the supervisor. As a result, the supervisor eventually stopped supervising because she never knew when she would be reprimanded for doing something correctly.

3) Because of her poor attendance record, she never got things done, nor did she follow through with things that were strongly encouraged by commissioners or her staff such as: 1) automated phone system; 2) employees sick and vacation time; 3) hiring more help or replacing help that has left; 4) reconciling the checking account with outstanding cases; 5) collect court costs that are owed (estimated to be at $750,000 or more); 6) ordering basic supplies for the office; 7) getting the dockets on-line (she’s been talking about doing this since 2000); 8) getting old records/cases either scanned into the office computers, or microfilmed). 9) Better security measures for the office. I believe that some of these have already been covered on your website.

4) She had a problem keeping accurate records of her employees sick and vacation time. When I left the office a couple of years ago, none of her employees knew how much sick and vacation time they had. As a result, some of her employees had taken more sick and vacation time than they were allowed possibly costing the tax payers thousands of dollars.

5) She usually showed up to county meetings late (if at all), and when she did show up, she sat in the back of the room and usually did not participate in the meetings.”


This article will be continued next week.