 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name is Adam Payne. I'm the Sheboygan County Administrative Coordinator and co-host of this program with Chairman Bill Gehring and today our guest is Nan Todd who is the elected clerk of courts. Nan's going to talk a little bit about the roles and responsibilities of the clerk of court's office. If you've ever received a fine, if you've had a situation where you've been called in for jury duty or other matters dealing with our law enforcement or court's office, chances are very good. You've interacted with Nan or one of her staff. So again, it's our pleasure to have Nan with us today. Thank you. Nan, why don't you share with our viewers a little bit about yourself, your background, and how long you've been working with the clerk of court's office? This is my second term in office. I was first elected in the year 2000, took office January 1st of 2001. I've been working in the office however for 26 years this June. So I have a strong background in the court system in Sheboygan County. I'm single. I'm at work every day and most weekends at some point. But 26 years with the clerk of circuit courts and you were elected, you said? In January of 2000. January of 2000? Or January of 2001 I took office, excuse me. And how have you enjoyed it so far? How's it going? I enjoy it. I really do. I love doing it. I love the working with the people. I love working with the staff. I have an excellent, excellent staff of 30 that does everything from going into court to collecting the fines to sending those jury notices that you receive. And let's talk about that a little bit. 30 employees that work for you. So you've got a good-sized department. Some of your roles and responsibilities, both yours and your staff, what are some of the primary responsibilities that you have? The responsibility of the Clerk of Courts office is basically to do the record-keeping for the entire court system. Which means from the time the case is initiated in the court system, which can be anything from civil, family, small claims, traffic, criminal traffic, felonies, misdemeanors, any any type of action. From the time that it's filed initiated with our office until it's disposed of and if it involves a fine until the fine is collected, we keep all the records. We schedule the cases to go through court. We set up and maintain the jury system, the law library for the judges, and basically we're here to serve the public. A lot of responsibility. How many courts are you working with? We have five circuit court judges. We also have one full-time and one part-time court commissioner who the full-time court commissioner has court daily. Her area of specialty is small claims, but she does a number of other things also. And though you're elected as an individual department head overseeing the Clerk of Circuit Courts office, you work very closely with the judges, do you not? Yes, I do, I do. And that's in a support role, or why don't you just touch on that a little bit? It is a support role. The entire department's function is to support the courts. So we basically do what we can to accommodate the judges' needs, schedule things according to what their ideas are as far as how long a case will take, try to keep their calendars running smoothly, prepare the cases to go into court. And your office is in the courthouse, as I'm sure most of our viewers are aware. If someone wants to come in and seek information or has a question or pay a fine, why don't you describe the process they go through? Our office, the main office is located on the first floor of the courthouse on the south end. We also have the judicial assistants located on the second floor who actually serve as the secretaries to the judges, keep their calendars, answer a lot of their correspondence, type decisions, all sorts of things like that. We also have the registrant probates office, which is located on the fourth floor, which is also under my command. We have an excellent registrant probate, however, so that office is very independent. If someone needs to pay a fine or start an action or has a question on a pending action, they can come to the first floor office and any of my staff would be very willing and able to assist them. The only caveat to that, however, is we cannot give any legal advice. We can advise people procedurally, but we can't give any legal advice. Now, if they're coming to the courthouse for a different reason, and that is they received a jury notice, clearly, they might be in a little better spirits when they walk in the facility if they're not paying a fine or forfeiture. What is that process? What are the steps a person goes through if they receive that jury notice? We actually send out questionnaires in the spring of every year. This year, we sent out 6,500 questionnaires to try to assess the status of the people that we want to summon in for jury duty. Out of that and the responses that we get to the questionnaires, we will then select enough to fill 13 panels of jurors for the year. Each panel last serves a term of four weeks and during that term you will serve or the most you can serve is five days or one trial, whichever is longer. If you have a trial that's lost longer than five days, you'll be expected to serve the entire trial, but of that month, you will only be expected to either report or serve for five days. Service is considered just coming in for a trial also, even if you're not selected to actually be on the jury. But once we get the questionnaires back, we go through and do a qualification process, which is done by the jury clerk, and then she begins to set up the panels for the year and will notify people by summons when or if they've been selected when their term is. We send a calendar along so that people can tell us if they have vacation planned or if they have to be out of town or they have something that they can't miss at work or an appointment. So we do try to accommodate that as much as we can also. And it really is a valuable public service. I mean, when you receive that jury notice, it's something to take seriously and frankly, there's an expectation that you're going to follow up, is there not? There is. Constitutionally, everyone is required to serve on jury duty if you are qualified, and it's something that is extremely important to the judicial system that we allow a jury of peers. And so we need everyone to do their share and serve on jury duty if they're called. And I imagine it's got to be very interesting as well, depending on the case and the situation, it's got to be a good learning opportunity for people too. It is. I've received comments from people who dreaded jury duty when they first got the summons and once they had actually sat through Voidir, which is the questioning process at the beginning of the trial, and been chosen for the trial and served, they said they found it fascinating and they were so glad that they actually had a chance to serve. Well, the last question before turning it over to Bill, and stepping back in the process, you don't receive that letter every month or every year. Isn't there a process where you're randomly selected and you may be contacted to serve once every few years? That's true. We get the names that we send the questionnaires to from the motor vehicle department, and it is anybody who has a driver's license or holds a Wisconsin ID card. So all of those names are submitted to us by the Department of Transportation. Again, we had 6,500 names that were randomly selected by them and submitted to us that we sent the questionnaires out to. If you actually are selected to be on a panel, and serve that period of one month, even if you never even had to report, if enough all the trials didn't go that you were scheduled for, you are not eligible to serve again for another four years. Well, very good. Thank you. Man, I know that your case loads continue to increase and you've really been putting a lot of emphasis on collecting fines, and you've talked a little bit about the type of cases you handle. Could you talk about the numbers of those cases that you handle? Our case load is generally increasing every year, unfortunately. Last year we had over 29,000 cases that were filed in the circuit courts. That's everything from felonies, misdemeanors, criminal traffic, ordinances, traffic, civil, small claims. We handle all the family-type matters, divorces, paternities, that sort of thing. Any juvenile cases are handled in the circuit courts. The only thing that has fluctuated slightly is the number of traffic citations and ordinance citations, and that's because several of the communities locally have begun municipal courts. So those numbers have gone down slightly, but those are the least labor-intensive types of cases. The ones that take a lot of effort have gone up, unfortunately. What type of fees, fines, and other forfeitures do you collect, and how do you really collect them, go out and find the people, or how does that happen? Sometimes we have to. We collect the fines and forfeitures on all felonies, misdemeanors, ordinance-type cases. We collect the money and we distribute it to the municipalities that it should be distributed to. The state gets a portion. The county, the city of Sheboygan, if we're collecting on their behalf, or if a citation was issued by the village of Random Lake, we will give the fine dollars back to the village of Random Lake with the state taking a portion and the county keeping a very small portion. As far as how we collect, a lot of people pay without having to go after them. They either pay the citation when they receive it or they'll pay it right after it goes through court. We don't have any problems with those. We do have several different collection methods that we use. We have begun doing tax intercepts on unpaid fines past due. We do wage assignments if we find the employer. We will set people up on payment plans voluntarily so that they can pay us on a monthly agreement rather than having to pay all in full because some of the fines are substantial. The judges take that into consideration also. But if we have to, we will suspend driver's licenses. We will issue commitments for people to spend time in jail. And we will turn some cases over to a collection agency. Do we accept credit cards? We don't directly accept credit cards, but we do have a service that has an 800 number that we refer people to who will actually do the credit card transaction on our behalf and then wire us the money. But they will actually handle all the credit card transaction parts and it's at no cost to the county. That's great. Approximately how much is collected each year by your department and then how is that money divided up? Well, last year our receipts were $5,831,000. Of that we distributed $4,488,000 to the various municipalities with the county of Sheboygan keeping $1,256,000. The state received $2,700,000 and between the city and other municipalities they kept just over $500,000. And that was on a total of fines that were assessed by the court last year of $4,369,000. That's a lot of fines. So generally from year to year does the amount of money that we get to keep go up gradually or has it been decreasing because of other courts opening up in the county? It has been decreasing slightly, but not because of other courts opening. It's decreased most substantially because the proportion that the county keeps out of a case versus what the state now gets has changed. The state is keeping more, the county is getting less. The state in their efforts to balance the state budget the last, well the budget repair bill and then the budget that was just passed increased one fee each time by 30%. So what used to be $100 fee is now $160 or actually it's $170 by the time they rounded it because they didn't want odd cents. Just a break in here if I could. I mean from your standpoint as a department manager isn't it somewhat frustrating to know that you're collecting this level of fines and forfeitures. I mean you're in the process of administering and collecting all this yet you're not able to retain enough to cover your own expenses because your department does rely on the property tax levy to a certain extent. Does it not? Yes it does. Our tax levy impact is just over $400,000. And yes it is frustrating knowing the amount of money that we send back to the state and how little the state seems to appreciate what the counties do for them. And the threat of reduction in shared revenues is really frustrating. That's a good point to remind our legislators of the next time we meet with them. I know you've taken on some new initiatives to enhance collections. Can you talk about those? Sure. Within the last year we've really started to do a lot more in tax intercepts. We have the authority to intercept state income tax refunds and any state lottery winnings. So if we can obtain the person's social security number we will turn them over for tax intercept if they are delinquent. And this time of year we're getting a lot of complaints from people who have suddenly found that their taxes were intercepted for unpaid fines. The other thing that we've started doing is utilizing a collection agency because there are a lot of old fines that were unpaid that we can't find the people. We've tried everything we could do and they still haven't paid so we've turned them over to a collection agency. And that's been fairly successful also. Generally what happens with the old fines that somebody doesn't pay? Is there a statute of limitations that if they can avoid payment for so many years they just go away or are they always responsible? No, they are always responsible for the payment of fines. And everything that we do to try to collect them, nothing is in lieu of the fine. Nothing wipes it out. If your driver's license was suspended for, it used to be five years or now it's two years, if you serve out that period of time that does not wipe out the fine. That is actually a suspension for contempt of the court's order to pay the fine. The same thing as jail time. If you are issued a commitment to serve so many days in jail for nonpayment of the fine, it is for contempt of the court's order to pay. It's not in lieu of the fine. It does not wipe it out. You still have the obligation to pay it. And there is no statute of limitations on how long these fines stay in existence. Since we seem to have more vacancies in the jail now than we did in past years, have the judges moved more towards attempting to incarcerate people for not paying long term outstanding fines? Not really. Because the judges sort of collectively feel that it's counterproductive to put somebody in jail. It does not get the fine paid in many instances. And it is a cost to the taxpayers to have them housed there. So they will use commitments when they feel that it is going to be productive. But if they realize that it's not going to serve any purpose, they will not issue the commitment. And we resort to other means. Thank you. And to further discuss the fines and forfeitures, I mean I've heard and I know Bill and others have heard complaints that why aren't we doing more to collect these fines? And to your credit, you and your staff, you've stepped up efforts to do so and you've had a private consultant now help with that as well. But isn't the fact that if some folks don't have the money, you can't get it? I mean isn't it growing to a certain extent because some people simply just can't afford to pay the fine? Is that part of the... That's very true. The people with the most outstanding fines are usually the people who are least able to afford to pay them. We have in some instances actually approached the judges about writing off people's fines if we know they're in a circumstance where they're never going to be able to pay. We've had several people who because of health problems, health issues that we knew were not going to ever recover, we've asked for those fines to be written off by the courts and the judges will consider things like that. Aside from tax intercepts and payment plans and trying wage assignments with people, there really is no other way to collect the money. You can't get money from people that don't have it. You can't punish someone for being indigent. Bill raised an interesting question about what's the judge's recourse and he asked you well if they can't pay the fine then are they being sent to jail for punishment there for whatever law they broke? And you explained that well that may not be a win-win situation because then they aren't able to work to try to get the money to pay the fine. But if that's not a viable alternative has there ever been other discussions about well if the person simply can't afford it and putting them in jail is expensive to tax payers and they can't work there either about having them do some type of community service? Occasionally we will have someone who is allowed to do community service to counter off part of their fines. The problem that we've run into with that is in counties where they actually do that they have a community service officer, they have a program set up, they have someone who can monitor it and the cost to administer the program is quite expensive. It is a benefit to the community but it's also a large cost to the community. So that's something that Sheboygan County has not actually ever been in a position to initiate. That's to provide a new program when you don't have the dollars, the revenue to do so. Right exactly and at this point in time it's not something that the county needs to bear the expense of. You mentioned the municipal courts that are becoming more popular and I know the city of Sheboygan is seriously considering creating their own municipal court. And I've had folks ask me about that well what are the pros and cons of that and it seems like one of the positives certainly is that that local unit of government is generating some revenue by taking on some of that responsibility. But on the other hand it seems to be counter to consolidation and you know consolidating who in fact is going to be providing that service. What are your thoughts on that? Well I can see it from both sides and I see pros and cons for our office on both sides too. The city of Sheboygan would be issuing fines that would total lower in dollar because the court costs on a municipal ordinance if you're using a municipal court are substantially less than circuit courts. The city of Sheboygan would keep half of what the court costs are with the other half going to the state. Right now in order to run a case through the circuit courts if you are a municipality such as the city of Sheboygan and it's a regular traffic or an ordinance not criminal stuff. Criminal would always have to go through the circuit courts. But if it's just regular ordinance type things they are assessed a fee of five dollars per case in order to handle these through the circuit courts. But we do the collecting for them and distribute the money the way it should be distributed. We take care of paying the judges we pay the court staff everything else. So the city of Sheboygan would essentially have to hire or appoint or elect a judge. They would I would imagine need to increase staff in order to handle the clerking responsibilities and the collection responsibilities. I'm not sure financially if it's feasible for them that's something that they're looking into. As far as my office is concerned we would be eliminating several thousand cases. But they are regular traffic cases in which case either people pay before they go to court takes virtually no court time or they pay shortly after court or we suspend the license for failing to pay. And then turn it over to collections if we can't get the money that way. They'll have to do their own collecting. We don't invest a lot of time in those and as far as local ordinance violations for the non traffic type situations that disorderly conduct petty theft underage consuming those types of things. We have no enforcement power whatsoever. We can't suspend the driver's license. We can't incarcerate the person. So we're very frustrated by those types of cases. So it would actually be a benefit for us not to have to deal with those. And would the city then be able to enforce some of those ordinances? The city municipal judges have the authority to incarcerate a person for failing to pay an ordinance violation. Circuit courts do not. So there are as you said some pros and cons and it all needs to be talked through. However the city would also need to pay the county jail to house the person if they chose to incarcerate them. So there are a lot of things for the city to look at in this one year study that they're doing. You've talked about some of the key challenges already as you've shared you know the revenue situation in your budget and we only have a few minutes remaining. Are there any new initiatives that you've been working on that you'd like to share with our viewers that you're going to provide a beneficial service? One thing that I'm really excited about that I've been working on along with the court commissioner Rebecca Persek who actually was the person that initiated this project. Through our IT department the information technology we are setting up a website that will be a family self-help website. We'll answer questions and we'll assist people in doing their own family actions so that because we're seeing more and more people who don't want to hire an attorney, can't afford an attorney, feel that they have a simple enough divorce that they can do it themselves. So we're starting a website that will answer the questions, help them with some yes and no questionnaires. Should I be doing this myself or not? We'll provide the forms for Sheboygan County family self-help. So you anticipate this being up and running on our website? Hopefully I would say by the end of summer we should be done setting it up. And for those of you who haven't checked out the Sheboygan County website, I think it's become a real valuable tool to gain more information. Whether it's the clerk of courts or any other department and a lot of credit to Joyce Schneider our information systems director and all the department heads. Certainly Nan included for building that. In fact that was something Bill I think you initiated a couple of years ago. So if you haven't checked it out please do so. And on behalf of Bill and myself it certainly was a pleasure to have you with us today Nan. Thank you for your time. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for joining us. Next month our guest will be Pat Miles, the Land and Water Conservation Director to talk about some of the activities that the Land and Water Conservation Department is involved with. They've got some tree sales coming up here at the end of the month that I'm sure some of you may be checking out. And again they offer a lot of technical assistance to those interested in natural resources etc. So again on behalf of Chairman Bill Gehring, myself Adam Payne and the Sheboygan County Board thanks for joining us today.