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Candidate Bio
I am a lifelong resident of Caroline County. I am a farm kid, the daughter of a preacher and a teacher. Continuing in our agricultural roots, my husband Jered and I are raising our three girls on our own little farm in Denton. I am a graduate of North Caroline High School, and I continued my education locally at Chesapeake College. I entered the professional world and have held various leadership positions over the past 20 years. These include banking, customer service, real estate title, paralegal, and finally the Maryland Judiciary where I hold a career leadership position today in the Clerk’s office. I am a graduate of the esteemed Court Supervisor and Manager Certificate Program, Class of 2021. I am proud to uphold the mission of the Maryland Judiciary in providing “fair, efficient, and effective justice to all.” Locally, I am a member of multiple community organizations, including Denton Rotary, Denton PTA, Caroline County Farm Bureau, Caroline County Historical Society and the Caroline County Republican Women. Professionally I am a member of the MidAtlantic Association for Court Management, along with serving on multiple workgroups within the Maryland Judiciary.
How does the office that you are seeking serve citizens in Caroline County?
The Clerk of the Court is actually the keeper of the record. It's outlined in courts and judicial proceedings what the responsibilities of the clerk are. The things that people are most familiar with are usually land recordings – deeds and mortgages and plats – and different land recordings that they may need throughout the time of their purchasing or selling property. Besides that, the clerk's office issues business licenses, marriage licenses. The clerk swears people into office. So it's a very community-oriented, community-involved position. There are also court-related matters. There are a lot of family cases, and not so many criminal cases. There are fun court related-cases like adoptions.
The clerk's office overall is a service-oriented organization, and when somebody comes to you and asks you for help, I want them to know when they come in the door of the office that I'm going to do everything that I can to help them and assist them, even if it's not necessarily something that the clerk's office handles – that I have the resources to point them in the right direction.
If your office budget has significant budget cuts, how do you imagine you will handle this?
Actually, this is something I'm really familiar with. I'm the only one who really handles the budget, along with the Clerk of Court. I used to handle that in Queen Anne's County as well. I'm currently the senior fiscal clerk and senior land records clerk in the office.
So the Administrative Office of the Courts and the Maryland Judiciary are passing down to the clerk's office what the legislature has decided as far as the budget goes. The budget is formed one fiscal year ahead of time. Just recently we had to cut the budget. So (current Clerk of the Court) Terry (Lord) and I worked together to trim the certain areas that were required of us. It's not our choice, usually, which areas we're to trim, but the clerk does have discretion over a number of the accounts that are included in our budget, so there's always a little bit of wiggle room because of those areas that the clerk is directly responsible for. So sometimes you can get creative, even though you got cut. So the Administrative Office of the Courts said for FY26 you have to cut overtime and travel, and here's the percentage that you have to cut it by. And so at that point you would have to look at overall what you had requested initially, and then what you think you actually need, and then skim off these certain amounts from either travel or overtime.
Right now, we're actually operating under restraints because we had to cut the budget, so there is not a lot of extra travel or additional courses or continuing education that people can take at this point in time. Let's say I wanted to take a specific course. I would have to wait until the next fiscal year to take that course. So as far as overtime goes, you know, let's say the courtroom runs longer than expected. This could happen, particularly with a jury trial or something. So if it runs longer than expected, you still have to pay that employee, but you may not have enough funds in the budget. And so then the decision would become how can we operate within the restraints that we have and still provide the level of service that people are expecting?
Your office is a state office serving Caroline County residents. How will you manage local needs with state requirements?
Within the Clerk's office, 90% of our revenue is actually staying locally, not going to the state. I think that's something that most people don't know, because that all goes on behind the scenes. For instance, if you come in to get a marriage license, $10 goes to the state and $25 goes locally. It's part of what's called the local revenue disbursement. And it's not just the marriage licenses, the business licenses are a big thing right now; 92% of that revenue goes to either the incorporated town or municipality that the business is located in, or to the county if they're not located within a municipality. So that's a big part of what we do. And as far as land records go, there's what's called a county transfer tax when somebody is buying a piece of property, and that percentage actually is 95% that goes to the county and the clerk keeps a 5% cut as a fee that is deposited within the state for collecting the revenue. There's a recordation tax that's collected by the tax office. That amount actually stays 100% in the county. The clerk's office historically has been a revenue-based business. I'm a court supervisor-manager certificate program graduate with the Maryland Judiciary. So I completed a 3-year program that trained me in all areas of the clerk's office. Because the clerk's office is a local office, you're usually the first face that people see when they come in. I personally know where to find the resources to handle complicated situations. I spent 10 years of my career as the supervisor for land records and licensing in Queen Anne's County, so I managed the entire department of four people, and then after that, I transitioned over to being the senior fiscal clerk and managed all the funds going in and out from there. I work really closely with the employees down at the tax office and within the administrative part of the county, and I feel like that's a really important part of this. A big part of the function of the Clerk's office is collecting that revenue, sending it to the county or the local incorporated towns, and having those interpersonal relationships, so that even if something may not necessarily be handled by the Clerk's office, you know the person that you need to call to help out that citizen that's standing right in front of you with a problem.
Developing employees to know all of the areas and functions of the office, instead of just one specific area, and then encouraging people is something that I actually learned how to do in Queen Anne's County. So some of the people that worked under me ended up going to the Administrative Office of the Courts, another one ended up being the supervisor in another county, (and) one of them I actually encouraged to take my supervisory position when I left. They're all in leadership positions. So I'm not saying I did that by myself, but I helped in providing them with the tools if they chose to grow in their knowledge and their responsibility as an employee. I think part of being a good leader is to develop other people and to capitalize on their strengths.
