A FORMER EMPLOYEE SPEAKS OUT: PART 2

This is a continuation of last weeks article.

"6) The office was extremely understaffed. After hearing about the people that left and/or retired recently I can’t imagine the stress those girls are under now. Anyway, several years ago (before the current budget cuts) she received the OK from the County Commissioners to hire 4 more people for her office. She never hired a single person. She would continually take people from the Title Dept (which is technically run and paid for by the State of Ohio) and put them into the Court Office.

7) In all my years in that office, I think I can count on one hand the number of times she attended the Clerk of Courts Association (CCA) meetings. She rarely attended them and when she did, she did not pass the information on to her employees. Even when she received notices from the CCA about changes in the Ohio Revised Code (ORC) or other information that her office staff needed to be made aware of, she did not pass that information on to us.

8) Along the same lines, she never sent any of her staff to continuing Ed workshops (usually put on by the CCA). As a result, we were “behind the times” when it came to Clerk of Court procedures.

9) She seemed to pride herself in being “fiscally responsible.” Every year she would turn money back into the commissioners that she never used. Yet getting her to buy us basic office supplies that we needed was worse than pulling teeth. A few examples: 1) We would continually run out of Stationary, or legal forms, because she would not re-order them (and she would never let her supervisors order them either); 2) We would get a lot of paper coming into that office, and a lot of paper for one court case. We would need a special stapler that could staple a 100 (or so) pages together for a single case. We had just one of those staplers for the entire office (and this was the entire North side of the Court House) so if we needed the stapler, we would have to run around the entire office to see who had it so we could use it. I checked into the price of those staplers, and if I recall correctly, they were around $60.00 a piece. She refused to order another 1 or 2 of those for the office. Likewise, the scanner for the computer (one for the entire office) was antiquated and she would not order a new one or one for the 3 sections of the office. Knowing how Barb operates, I doubt they have a new scanner or 2 or 3 to date.

10) She would never, ever show appreciation for her employees or back them up. If someone came into the office to complain about how something was done, instead of explaining why it was done that way (according to the ORC or local rules) she would try to appease the person by doing it the way the person wanted. Most of the time, she did this because she herself did not know the ORC or the local rules well enough, and she certainly would never ask her staff because that would have made her look stupid. So she would make things up as she went along. She would rarely take any advice from any of her staff who were the ones there everyday and knew their jobs and what they were doing; at least as far as we knew with the very limited information she would give us.

11) Her supervisors are supervisors in name only. She never gave them any responsibility or authority to do anything. Her supervisors hold no more authority than any other girl in that office. She was the only person allowed to make any decisions in the office. The only problem was, she had an extremely difficult time making any kind of decision about anything and she was never in the office to know what was going on or what to decisions needed to be made. And the few times that her supervisor made a decision, she would over rule it and do the complete opposite and sometimes even reprimand the supervisor for doing what they did. I felt sorry for the supervisors because it was a lose-lose situation for the them. I was so glad that I was not in their shoes!

Anyway, like I said before, there is life after the COC office, and I hope that those girls either retire, or find another job because the job in that office is really “hell on earth” which is too bad because it doesn’t need to be that way. As I said before, there is life after the Clerk of Courts office.

These are just a few of my thoughts. I will email you any other memories or thoughts that come to mind.”

(signed)

A former Erie County Clerk of Court Employee

(and glad to be former)”

To reiterate what I wrote previously, this really backs up much of what we have said in the past…and much more!

Too bad, and so sad; especially since OUR tax money is paying her to do “NOTHING” about everything.

To you the voter I ask: Does this look like she is doing the job that she was elected by YOU THE VOTERS AND TAX PAYERS of Erie County to do?