A VETERAN IS RETIRING

COC Watch found out last week that veteran office worker Anita is retiring at the end of December 2009.

This comes as a stunning blow because Anita has been there for 30 plus years, working in the trenches day in and day out and knows that office inside and out. If anyone has experience in that office it is Anita and not Barb Johnson.

Anita is the supervisor in the Court Dept of the Clerk’s office, but according to a former employee, she must be in title only with absolutely no decision making power what so ever.

Apparently, Johnson has known about Anita’s pending retirement since September. Will she hire someone to take her place soon enough for Anita to train this new person, or will she wait until 6 months, a year, or longer to hire a replacement? Since it has been over 5 months since Title Office Supervisor Sandra Brown abruptly quit and Johnson has not yet replaced Sandra, we here at COC Watch are wagering that it will be AT LEAST 1 YEAR before Johnson replaces Anita.

Perhaps by then the County Commissioners will tell her that she can not hire any replacements because it took her so long to ask for the hiring, so it’s obvious that she doesn’t need that extra worker in the office. This in turn will just add MORE STRESS to the already overworked and overstressed office staff to try and pick up the pieces! ! But do you think that Johnson will get “in the trenches” and help her workers out? HELL NO! ! She is known for her creating havoc and chaos, then leaving the office for her staff to fend for themselves.

Speaking of Sandra Brown’s replacement, COC Watch has received information from an anonymous source that Barb does have resumes from people who have applied for that position. The question we have is, why would Johnson hire someone off the street who doesn’t know the job to be the supervisor of the Title Department? According to our source, there is an employee in the title office now named Peggy who knows that office and how it should be run. Why doesn’t Johnson make Peggy the new supervisor? Why hire someone off the street who doesn’t know how the Title Office works, or operates to be the supervisor?

(Sigh)….It’s just another example of Johnson’s incompetence as Erie County’s Clerk of Courts.

Well we at COC Watch wish Anita a happy retirement; Lord knows she has more than earned it working in those conditions.

Just when you think, “It can’t POSSIBLY get any worse! !” Then it does!

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?

COC WATCH IN SANDUSKY REGISTER FORUMS

There was a blogger on the Sandusky Register Forum site that criticized this website and the Firelands 411 website. The Forum thread titled “Firelands411 and the ‘Remove Johnson’ blogs” where the creator of the thread, Oliver Hardy, states On September 27, 2009, that both this blog, and Firelands411 are “dead.” He feels that he was mistreated on the 411 blog, and upset with this blog for not providing more information on “threatening emails” by Elsabeth Baumgartner (which we had eluded to briefly in a previous comment).


His first comment was in reference to the COC article “Areas of Concern 8: Have Case Files Properly Filed Away”
Mr. Hardy’s August 19, 2009 comment was:
“Anonymous said... To ‘The Editor’
I am commenting for the first time here. I am researching the Elsebeth Baumgartner case and other cases. Please provide examples of "threatening emails" to Markus.
Oliver Hardy”



To which COC Watch replied on August 20, 2009:
THE EDITOR said...
Mr. Hardy –

I want to keep this blog on topic. Since this blog is about Barbara Johnson and not Elsebeth Baumgartner I do not want to get into a discussion about Baumgartner. I would love to discuss anything about Johnson. If you are doing research on EB, then I suggest that you google "Elsebeth Baumgartner threatening emails" and I'm sure you'll get a list of what you need there for your research.

If you have any comments and/or questions about Barbara Johnson and the Erie County Clerk of Courts Office, I would be more than happy to address those issues.”



A couple of days later (9/29/09), Mr. Hardy states on the same SR Forum thread:
“I recently checked out the "Remove Johnson" blog and saw four entries by the "Editor" of the blog with no responses from the readers. Nada, zilch, zero responses in almost a month.”



October 6, 2009, we responded to Mr. Hardy’s comments on the SR Forum:
“First, I did not create COC blog necessarily for people to have a discussion on (however if they want to and stay on topic, that is fine). I created the blog to educate the voters of Erie County on how Barb Johnson is not doing her job and needs to be voted out in the next election. It was created to be an information blog, not a discussion blog.

Secondly, the COC blog is far from being "Dead." I judge the success of the blog not by how many people comment on it, but rather how many people log on and read it. According to the "website hit tracker" that I use, July had 575 hits, August had 640 and September 595. That's an average of 602 hits per month and an average of 150 hits per week. That is all with no advertisement of any kind, just word of mouth. To me, that shows a pretty good success and that the blog is not dead, nor even dying.

I would expect (and hope) that the hits will increase overtime (as they continue to do) especially as we near the 2012 election.”




As the editor of this site, I stand by our policy that this sight is about Barb Johnson and is not meant to be a forum for Elsabeth Baumgartner or anyone else. It is about Barb Johnson, period.

I also stand by the fact that this is an “INFORMATIONAL” site, and NOT a “discussion” site. If people want to discuss Johnson and the COC, great, but that is not what is expected. INFORMATION is the purpose of this site; getting the public educated on how the current Erie County COC is being run so that Johnson does not get re-elected for a 7th term in office.

So there it is folks; the hits are high and climbing. If you want to comment, keep it on topic (Erie County COC and Barb Johnson).

Next week’s article will be about personnel changing in the office.

NEW ARTICLE NEXT WEEK

Due to circumstances beyond our control, there will be no new article this week. Please check back next week for a new article.

QUARTERLY REPORT CARD: SUMMER 2009

Here is Erie County Clerk of Courts Barbara Johnson's “Report Card” which covers July - September 2009.


QUARTER: Summer 2009
ITEM GRADE
1. Attendance = 9

2. Records on line = 0

3. SSN & financial account numbers removed from hard copy case files = 0

4. Collection on estimated $700.000 in outstanding court costs and fines = 0

5. Address office understaffing = 2

6. Microfilming closed cases = 0

7. Improve customer relation skills of the staff = 0

8. Have case files properly filed away = 0

9. Monitoring program to keep cases from being illegally removed from the office=0

10. Send staff to continuing Ed workshops to keep them on top of ORC changes = 0

11. Automated Phone System = 0

12. Over all Grade = 1


Grade scale: 12=A+; 11=A; 10=A-; 9=B+; 8=B; 7=B-; 6=C+; 5=C; 4=C-
3=D+; 2=D; 1=D-; 0=F

Well, slight improvement in some areas (attendance and addressing office understaffing), but nothing to brag about. She went from an F the previous 2 quarters to a D- this quarter; 11 months after being reelected. When it comes right down to it, "NOTHING" is still being done in that office as this (and previous) report cards show. Her attendance has improved dramatically, but is she doing with her time? Too bad, and so sad; especially since OUR tax money continues to pay 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?

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?