Carbon clerk gives final report on backlog

In her final act as Carbon County clerk of courts, Francine Heaney gave one last update Thursday as to where the office stands 14 months after she was appointed to clean up the mess that was created by former clerk William McGinley.

Heaney said the office and staff has come a long way from where it was in October 2018.

“The office had 27 months of backlog, costs and fines not assessed, papers in boxes, boxes all over, files all over,” she said.

“We organized, reorganized, re-reorganized, prioritized, re-prioritized, re-re-prioritized and finally got the system straightened out.”

There are currently 12 months of backlog remaining, Heaney said, but noted it is a “thin 12 months,” meaning that when a new case is filed, her staff is looking to see if that person has older cases in the backlog and processing them if they do so they have a final total of costs and fines that are due as they move through the system.

In addition, the staff of both the clerk of courts and bureau of collections offices are now completely trained; all the bail money that had been missing has been replaced onto the cases that it was supposed to be on; refunds that were due had been mailed out; and the office staff learned and began doing costs and fines, as well as returned to being in court.

“My staff has been amazing,” Heaney said. “I couldn’t ask for harder workers or more dedicated workers. They wanted to learn and were willing to learn. I am very proud of the progress we made.”

She thanked the board of commissioners and staff for working with her department to allow them to sort through the backlog and get the office back in working order.

“We would have not been able to do it without working together as a team,” Heaney said. “I am very proud to have served the people of Carbon County.”

Heaney will leave the office Jan. 5, but will continue working in the county as a GIS technician in the GIS department, beginning Jan. 6. She lost the general election to serve the final two years of McGinley’s term to Tyra Boni, who will be sworn in as the new clerk of courts on Jan. 6.

Commissioner William O’Gurek, who did not seek reelection and is ending his term as commissioner after 16 years, thanked Heaney for all she has done to clean up the mess in that office.

“You have done a fantastic job and I think the people of Carbon County, the county commissioners and count government are indebted to the job you did,” he said.

Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein echoed O’Gurek’s thoughts.

“You did a fantastic job,” he said. “I really hate to see you go. You turned that office around.”