Technology helps offset small staff of Shelby clerk

Shelby County Circuit Clerk Mary Harris said technology is making public access to her office a bit easier these days, despite staffing levels from the 1980's.

In an effort to keep her staff off the phone as much as possible, Harris has filled her Web site with answers to questions people often have about subjects such as jury duty, traffic tickets, passports and absentee voting.

The problem with telephone calls is that the assistant clerks must stop updating files, typing records and creating dockets and jury lists.

The fastest-growing county in the state does not have the fastest-growing clerk's office, Harris said. "We still have the same number of employees we had in 1989 - 16."

She noted a statistic that bugs her a bit. According to recent estimates and growth patterns, "we have passed Tuscaloosa County in population. The Tuscaloosa clerk's office has 31 employees," she said.

"In 1994, a state manpower study said we should have 21.5 people," Harris said, but state court system funding hasn't allowed her to hire more help. Meanwhile, the office's workload has almost tripled.

The number of Shelby County cases - civil, criminal, small claims, domestic relations, juvenile, traffic, child support and warrants - increased from 10,793 in 1990 to 27,145 in 2004.

When Harris, 51, came to the office straight out of high school as a rookie typist in 1972, the office dealt with a grand jury and its resulting stacks of indictments, new criminal case files and warrants twice a year.

"Now we have grand jury once a month except July, and we have more terms of court," she said. Nineteen terms of jury trials are set this year.

Sending out jury notices no longer falls on the clerk's office, Harris said. Those issue from Montgomery now. But prospective jurors still have a lot of questions.

A web site at http://18jc.alacourt.gov answers many of the questions people are accustomed to asking on the telephone, Harris said. She has two pieces of advice for Shelby Countians with court business: "Check the Web site first, and remember that their is no 'www' in the address."

On the site, Harris has a list of jurors' frequently asked questions, along with the answers. They range from such simple queries as what to wear to more complicated questions posed by people who have medical problems, who are worried about losing a day's pay or who live in Shelby County but work in another state.

Another set of questions and answers covers absentee voting, a responsibility of the clerk's office.

The state court system has found some ways to ease the burden on the clerks' offices, including a state-maintained Web site that allows offenders to pay traffic tickets online. Called Alapay, it has collected more than $65,000 since March for Shelby County.

Harris credits Chief Justice Drayton Nabers of the Alabama Supreme Court with a willingness to listen to clerks' ideas.

One time-saving idea that the state court system allows, however, Harris has rejected so far, "The chief justice has authorized clerks' offices to close for up to 10 hours a week," she said.

The thinking behind the closing is that, without the public coming into the office, clerks can try to catch up on paperwork. Some counties shut down from noon until 2 p.m., for example.

"I feel strongly about people taking off from work to handle court business and having to wait an hour or two hours because the office is closed," Harris said. "We don't even close for lunch."

Harris also is not ashamed to ask the public for help. Each person called for jury duty soon gets the word on how state budget-slashing has hobbled operations in the clerk's office. Then, along with their checks for jury service, jurors get the opportunity to donate their pay to a fund Harris maintains to pay part-time help, a fund that jurors have aided to the tune of $7,365.40 since October 2003.