Field Trip #4: Clerk of the Circuit Court

We went to the County Center downtown Sept. 30 to meet the Clerk of the Circuit Court, Pam Frank. She was elected the Clerk/Comptroller in 2004 and has been in public service and elected positions since 1972.

Frank was able to give us a great deal of information in a short amount of time. This office is the most important office in Hillsborough County that people know the least about, she said.

As the Clerk/Comptroller, Frank is responsible for the county's funds, not just spending but investing, as well. She said that there are three criteria to keep in mind when investing the county's funds: 1.) Stability (return of principle), 2.) Liquidity, 3.) Rate of Return.

In addition, the Clerk's office is responsible for paying all 6,500 Hillsborough County employees. Only 11 people in the Clerk's office handle issuing paychecks to all of these people.

The office keeps records, too, such as board meeting minutes, voting records and official records. All of the official public records that the office keeps used to be available to the public only on microfiche. Now, Frank is working to get all official public records on the Web.

This work toward updating technology is very slow going, however, since there are millions of documents that need to be converted to the Web, Frank said.

JoAnne Constantini, the Director of Official Records Development, added to the talk of technology, citing a new project: e-recording. The project is a paperless system of getting records to interested parties quickly, with a seven-minute turn around.

While e-recording carries with it benefits, like not waiting too long to get records and the lack of postage fees, the people who have jobs as couriers would no longer be needed if the Clerk's office kept up this project.

I, like many people, didn't know have far reaching the Clerk's duties and responsibilities were. As with the other field trips our class has gone on, I found out more about public records that are available to reporters. I also learned that many documents are all reachable within this one office.