 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name's Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Mike Van Der Stien. Yes, you heard me. Mike Van Der Stien, as you may have saw on the paper and knew from watching previous programs, Chairman Gehring after a five year tenure has moved on. And Mike Van Der Stien was just elected by the County Board this week. And we're very pleased to have him with us. Welcome, Mike. Thank you very much, Adam. We're looking forward to continuing the program and focusing on departments and providing overviews of departments. And today our guest is Nan Todd, who is the clerk of courts. And Nan, it's good to have you back. Good to be back, Adam. And welcome, Mike. I'm very glad to see that you were elected on Tuesday night. And I look forward to working with you. Thank you very much. It's been a bit of a whirlwind right now. Chairman Van Der Stien is in the midst of his making his committee appointments and the executive committee will be taking that up. I know this is a tape delayed program, but County Board will be meeting soon to reorganize and just a lot going on. But one of the many program responsibilities or department responsibilities that just continues to go on is the important work of the clerk of courts department. And Nan, please begin by sharing a little bit about yourself and when you first were elected to the clerk of courts. I've been actually in the clerk of courts department for 30 years this year. I was elected in 2000, took office January 1st. And yes, it was New Year's Day, 2001. We actually did the swearing in on New Year's Day that year. A little tough, but we managed. I'm single at the moment. I'm widowed as Mike served on City Council with my husband many years ago. That's where I first met Mike. I have one son who lives in California, two beautiful little grandsons, seven and three, who keep their parents busy. And I don't get to see them very often, but I still enjoy them. Well, very nice. So 30 years with the County in this department. And I know it was a two-year term for a clerk of court. And now it's a four-year term. That's correct. So you've been the clerk of court again for how many years? This is actually in my third term. Your third term. Very good, very good. Now, if you've ever had to pay a fine or if you ever asked to be on jury duty, chances are you're familiar with Nan or her staff or certainly this department. And how would you describe, in short, the roles and responsibilities of the clerk of court's department? My department actually is charged with maintaining all of the records of the circuit courts, which includes keeping track of all the cases that are filed in court, doing all the scheduling for the courts, maintaining the jury system, managing that, staffing the courts, and just a myriad of responsibilities, also collecting all the fines, forfeitures, filing fees, making sure that all the judgments are prepared properly, do all the sentencing documents, and all of the orders that come out of family and civil type cases. So if someone's pulled over and receives a speeding ticket, they're either stopping in at your office or sending that payment into your office? If they have been stopped by a county sheriff's deputy or by the Wisconsin State Patrol. Very good. Circuit courts, how many does Sheboygan County have? We have five circuit courts. We have one full time and one part time court commissioner also that hears cases. Specifically, they do the small claims actions and the court commissioner every day does what we call our lockups. Anybody who's been arrested the night before and is in jail waiting for their initial appearance for the bond to be set appears before the court commissioner. So five circuit courts, you're providing response support for those circuit courts. How many staff do you work with? I have a staff of 29, I'm sorry. 29, it was originally 32 when I took office and over the years we've managed to put in some savings in ways that we've streamlined some of our activities and I've managed to reduce staff through attrition. Okay. Our viewers, most of them may be familiar with that letter they periodically receive asking them to be a juror. And it's quite a responsibility. Unfortunately, I haven't had the opportunity I've received the letter but working for Sheboygan County whether if there's a conflict of interest or something like that, I haven't had the opportunity to do so but it's an important public service. And when people receive that letter, they may, many of them may think oh boy, how is this gonna disrupt my life or work or what have you? How does the process work? How does one go about being selected? How frequently can that happen with the population that we have in Sheboygan County? Please give our viewers a flavor for how that process of being selected and becoming a juror works. Well the Supreme Court just changed the jury system in Wisconsin to have everyone on a uniform jury year. So the jury year now runs the calendar year from January 1st to December 31st. So last year we had the pleasure of sending out two different groups of questionnaires. It was quite a challenge for last year because we were on account on a year that went from June or actually July 1st till June 30th. So we ended up doing actually two jury years last year. For this year, we sent out about 5,500 questionnaires which are to see if people are qualified to serve as a juror depending upon the responses we get from the questionnaires. We had probably close to 5,000 of those that were qualified. Of those, we enter all the information into the computer from those responses and we set up 13 panels. Each panel is a four week term and each panel, we have five of them set up at each group. Each of those is from 240 to 280 people. So even if you're selected for jury duty, you may end up not even being called in during your term. So you sent out 5,500. So what you said, 5,500 applications or surveys of that 5,500, there were about 5,000 who were eligible. And is that something that you fill out once a year or once a lifetime? It's every four years, depending upon the circumstances, occasionally we'll have people who are not qualified because they're a student out of state. So we may end up just sending them a new questionnaire the following year or the year after that. We kind of try to keep track of when people will be graduating and follow up. Ordinarily, it's every four years that you may be eligible to get a questionnaire. They fill that out, they send that in and then you randomly are working with that pool. Correct. And then what happens? Well, the names originally come from motor vehicle. So anyone who has a valid driver's license or actually anyone who has a driving record of any sort, be it Wisconsin ID or actually a driver's license, their name will be submitted to us. Once you've done the questionnaire, then as I said, we set up the panels for each of the jury terms. So you're actually, if you are selected, you'll be sent a summons for that four week period and a calendar that will tell you what trials are scheduled during that time. You're given a phone number to call in on Sunday night and on Sunday night, we'll let you know what trials in the coming week are actually still on the calendar. Then if there is still something on the calendar, you call in the night before and it will tell you whether or not you are required to report by name. And as busy as people are today, what is the general rule of thumb, what kind of time commitment is there to be a juror? In the four week period that you can be selected to be a juror, if you serve on one case, you are done with your service for four years. You're not eligible again for another four years. You may be required to report to court a couple of times. We've had a lot of people who are never even required to report to court because as I said, each panel has 240 people. Of those, when we call in a jury, depending upon the size of the jury, whether it's six or 12 person, we may only be selecting 36 names out of that group and telling those people or asking those people to report. Last year we had 57 groups of people who reported for a trial. Only 50 of those actually went to trial. Seven of them, they wound up settling that morning so the people reported and then were excused. So we actually had juries for about 79 days out of the total of last year. So it's not a huge commitment of time. So if you receive it, you may not necessarily be selected and if you're selected, you may not necessarily actually be on a case. On the case, right. Depending on what happens. Correct. Very good. Last question before I turn it over to Mike. When it comes to serving as a jury, just to get to that process, can anyone say they wanna have a trial by jury? How does that work? It depends upon what type of case it is. If you're charged with a crime, you have the right to a jury trial. That comes at no cost to you. If you are involved in a civil action, a small claims action, a juvenile matter, in order to request a jury, there's a small fee that has to be paid which is actually $6 per juror. So if you want a jury of six, you pay a fee of $36. If you want a jury of 12, it's $72. In a small claims case, there's an additional fee set by the state. So it's a total of $89 in a small claims case for a jury of six. But anyone has the right to request a jury. Very good. All right. Thank you, Dan. Dan, I know that your case load continues to increase and there's been more attention focused on collecting the fines that you have. How many cases do you handle and approximately what kind of different areas do they fall into? Well, last year our case load was about 17,700 cases. And they're anywhere from felonies, misdemeanors, criminal traffic, which would be something like a second or subsequent operating while intoxicated or eluding or operating after your license has been revoked. To county ordinance violations, to adoptions, termination of parental rights, children in need of protection and services. Civil matters, large-claimed civil matters, we actually had about 885 last year. Actually, we had more than that, excuse me. We had about 1,200 civil matters and we had about 660 of those were actually foreclosures of mortgages. So that case load has increased tremendously. It went up about 200 cases last year. We also have about 1,200 small claims actions that are heard in court. So collection of fines is one small piece of what actually goes on in the office. Granted, it's a large source of our revenue. Our office handles about six and a half million dollars each year. Last year, we collected 4.1 million in fines and filing fees. We've recently seen a number of municipal courts open up in the county wondering how does that affect your office? What that has done is lower the case load that we have in the area of ordinance traffic and non-traffic cases. Things such as shoplifting, minor disorderly conduct, filler to stop at a stop sign, speeding, those types of actions have cut down in our office. The only ones we are handling now are state patrol and anything written by the sheriff's deputies. All of the other case types continue to be heard in circuit court. Municipal court can only hear those types of actions, the very small ordinance violations. How does the work that you do in your court differ from what municipal courts do? In our court, as I said, we handle all different case types. So we handle cases that require a lot of court appearances. Family actions, for instance, the action gets filed, there's a waiting period, there's appearances before the circuit court. Commissioner to set temporary orders, there's appearances before the judge for the final decrees, those sorts of things. In municipal court, basically you're issued a traffic citation. You can elect to not go to court and simply pay the fine. You can elect to go to court if you want to, but generally there's only one court appearance and the case is over with. Okay, what types of things does circuit court have to provide that municipal courts don't have to? There are a lot of expenses in the circuit courts that are not found in municipal courts. One of the major ones is that if you are convicted or are accused of a crime and you cannot afford an attorney, you have the constitutional right to have one appointed at public expense. So we provide attorneys in those types of cases. In cases where there is involvement of a child, such as in a juvenile court action or in a family court action where there is some concern over the placement of the child or visitation, things like that, we provide what's called a guardian ad litem. It is an attorney who represents the best interest of the child. Those two expenses are found only in circuit courts. We provide interpreters for all case types. I know that in municipal court, I'm sure they provide some level of interpretation, but I don't think they do to the extent that we do because the criminal actions require so many court appearances. Another area of course is a jury that you have a right to a jury trial in the circuit courts and in municipal court you do not have a jury available to you. That costs the county about $56,000 a year. Okay, thank you. What types of fees and fines do you collect and how do you go about collecting these? Any time a defendant is sentenced to anything other than probation, all the fines are paid through the clerk of court's office. If they're on probation, they're paid to their probation agent and then the money is sent to the clerk of court's office for distribution to the various entities. We collect filing fees anywhere from $83 for a small claims action, up to $256 for a civil action. We collected last year, as I said, about $4.1 million in fines and filing fees. What happens to the money after you collect it then? It gets divided up between the county, the state, and a few municipalities we're still collecting a little bit of money for. Last year, the county actually kept, I believe it was about two, it was about, let's see. The county actually got to retain of the $4.1 million $1,250,000. We forwarded on to the state about two and a half million dollars. So we're doing the majority of our collection, actually, for the state. Then we collected, as I said, a little bit of money yet for Outstanding City of Sheboygan and other municipal fines that are still on the books. But the majority of the money is either retained by the county in a small amount or twice as much goes to the state. And how is this different from what a municipal court does with the distribution of the funds they receive from fines? Municipal court, if you receive a citation, there is what's considered a base forfeiture. It would be, as I'm sure you've heard on TV, $50 plus court costs. In the city of Sheboygan, court costs are $23 for the city, $5 for the state. Then there's also a jail surcharge that goes to the county of $10 and a penalty surcharge that goes to the state that's a percentage of that basic $50 forfeiture. So the city gets to keep the $50 forfeiture and $23 of the court costs. If you're issued that same type of a fine in criminal court, if you're convicted of a crime and you're told $50 plus costs, you'll end up paying about $189. Of that, the county gets to keep $5 of the $50 fine and we get to keep $10 of the court costs of over $115. So most of the money goes to the state in those instances. Thank you. It's rather remarkable. I don't know if our viewers followed those last two questions closely or not, but for those who did, Nan just shared that they're doing the work. You're the one collecting the fines and the forfeitures and supporting the clerk of court's structure and collecting the fines. Yet what you just shared is from a county standpoint, we're keeping about what 25% or less and forwarding on the rest to the state. That's correct. And it's got to be frustrating. I mean, I give you a lot of credit having worked in that department now for 30 years, but now as a department head who has larger responsibilities with helping Chairman Van der Steen and the county board balance the budget and keep property taxes in check, that when you're collecting all this revenue for work that you're doing to support the court system and passing so much of that on, what's happening there? What's happened over the years? Recently I did a little bit of research on actually what's transpired over the 30 years that I've been in the office. A $50 fine used to be about $60 total. Small court costs divided between the state and the county. The state began inventing more and more surcharges that they added on to the fines. The penalty surcharge was the very first one that started out at 10%. It's up to 26% now that goes to the state was developed originally to support officer training on the state level, goes to training state patrol officers basically. They've added a lot of surcharges, fees, assessments that are all returned to the state rather than retained by the county. We're still keeping the same tiny little portion that we kept 30 years ago. Traffic citation, $7.50 and that's still what we're getting is $7.50. And of course I've had the opportunity to look at some of this information that NAN has done a nice job pulling together and it's rather remarkable. It's kind of out of sight, out of mind. I mean, how many people think about fines and forfeitures and collections and what's retained by the county and what's sent on to the state? I mean, frankly, who wants to spend time thinking about that? The three of us have a responsibility to do so. And once you start drilling down, you see the incredible disparity and inequity of the dollars you're collecting but then because you're forwarding so much of that on where the state has added more fines and surcharges that they're keeping. What's happened over the years is the property taxpayer is picking up the difference. Over time has cost of livings gone up, whether it's fuel operations to support your department, the property taxpayers paying more and more to offset that difference. And it's probably, and it leads to me to the next question, you know, when you look at your challenges ahead as a department head and trying to do more with less and work with modest increases in revenue, how do we attack that? What do we do to improve this situation? I don't know that there are any easy answers. One answer that does come to mind is that when the state public defender's office was created in the early 90s, they were charged with reviewing their qualification levels every two years when they were first established. It was set at the federal poverty guidelines. They've never raised those rates. The county continues to pick up more and more of the tab for people who should be eligible for public defenders and aren't. Last year that was $147,000. Last year we spent $147,000 also on guardians at Lightham. That's a huge chunk of money that should really be borne by the state. The state has changed some legislation recently so that they will be picking up more of the cost of interpreters, not 100%, but they will be reimbursing the counties a little bit more for the interpretation services that we have to provide. If the legislature would create a fee that was retained by the county that could be assessed on any fine or filing fee, I think it would be reasonable that it would provide some taxpayer relief on the county level without hurting the state. Register of Deeds is a great example. Some of our viewers may have gone into the Register of Deeds office to get a birth certificate or have something recorded. And there, that fee you pay to have something recorded or to get a copy of your birth certificate, most of that is retained by the Register of Deeds or at least a higher percentage than what the clerk of courts is able to retain. Therefore, no property tax levy is supporting that department. And our hope is we can get there with the clerk of courts. I think most county board supervisors who have looked at this would agree that why should the taxpayer pick up the burden of paying for the support for someone who gets a speeding ticket or has smoked marijuana and has gotten ticketed or fined for that? Why not allow those folks who have made the mistake pay for that mistake? And so it'll be something that we'll need to work on in the future. The last question before we close here, Nan, is 30 years. I mean, when I sit down with you and think about that, 30 years in that department, as you reflect back on that, and you must have a passion for clerk of courts work and there's certainly a variety of what happens in your office, but what would you say are some of the biggest changes that have happened over those 30 years? The increase in caseload has been tremendous over the years. The types of cases that we're seeing have changed tremendously. There didn't used to be the criminal actions that there are now. The majority of the cases were smaller. They were more ordinance type violations rather than crimes. We're seeing a lot more crimes in the city as we become a larger county. We have I-43 running through the county, which is a highway between Milwaukee and Green Bay, and I think it brings a lot of problems to our community that have all wound up in the courts. I see a tremendous increase in the number of family actions that are filed. I think there was more of a stigma in divorce many years ago. Then there is now. The number of paternity actions have increased tremendously over the years. I don't really know that I can blame it on a decline of public morals or anything like that. It seems like the world is growing so fast, and as our population increases and the economy seems to be getting a little worse again, it just brings about a lot more problems. We have a lot more mobility in people. People are more transient than they used to be. People are moving constantly. It used to be that...