Overton County Clerk and Master Dorothy Stanton filed suit in Chancery Court on May 31 asking for additional employees and an increase in employee salaries for the office.

Brought under Tennessee Code Annotated 8-20-101 the lawsuit begins by setting out the duties of the office.

The suit points to the need for more employees because of duties added 12 years ago, stating, “As of the year 2000, the Clerk and Master received two (2) additional responsibilities by legislative action which transferred two new duties to her office as follows: 1. Juvenile Clerk and all the duties therewith; and 2. Probate Clerk and all the duties therewith.

The suit lists the three current employees’ pay as ranging from $18,500 for an employee with two years of experience to $23,323 for an employee with 23 years of experience.

The suit further insists that the Clerk and Master’s Office will not be able to hire a qualified person if the pay scale is not increased.

The suit asks for the new employees to be paid between $22,500 and $25,000.

Attorney Steve Daniels is representing Stanton.

Though not responding to the assertions in the lawsuit, County Executive Ron Cyrus addressed the issue by saying, “She came out first with a recommendation that she was short a person. She never came before the board and asked us. She just threatened to file a lawsuit, and we have not been served papers for, I believe, it is two additional people.

Though not at liberty to talk or give information concerning the lawsuit, Cyrus did have more to say about the operation of the Clerk and Master’s Office in a prepared statement, beginning with the money brought into the office.

Cyrus said that when offices are appointed by judges, it takes away the power of the people to vote. He suggested that the law could be changed if citizens contacted their state senators, state representatives and the governor’s office to request a change to the statute to make the office an elected position and turn the special commissioners’ fees back to the counties’ general funds.

Though some counties would receive little if any money from the fees going back into the general fund, such as Sullivan County, could benefit. A summary of special commissioners fees for 2010 showed that Sullivan County Clerk and Master receiving $357,385 in special commissioner’s fees.

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“It’s a shame,” Millard Oakley Public Library Director Cynthia Carmack said last week after a special report was issued June 4 by Tennessee Comptroller’s Division of local Government Audit.

The Comptroller’s investigation allegedly found that a $5,999.53 cash shortage existed at the library on March 2, 2012, and pointed its actions of the library’s deputy director at the time.

According to the report, on March 2, 2012, the library director was notified by the bank that the library’s bank account would soon by overdrawn.

“The library director questioned the deputy director who maintained this bank account for the library, and the deputy director resigned on March 2, 2012,” the report states. “The library director notified the Overton County Executive’s Office who then informed our office of the suspected irregularities in the library’s checking account.

“We examined bank deposits and disbursements in the library’s checking account from July 1, 2008 through March 26, 2012. Our procedures identified a cash shortage of $5,999.53 at March 2, 2012.”

The report alleges that the cash shortage included electronic disbursements from the library’s checking account for personal expenses of the deputy director totaling $2,289.58.

A statement from the Comptroller’s Office alleges, “The former employee used electronic withdrawals from the library’s checking account to pay for personal expenses such as satellite television, wireless telephone service and credit card bills.”

The audit report alleges that the deputy director also collected cash and checks on behalf of Friends of the Library and, instead of turning the collections over to the nonprofit organization, deposited these funds into the library’s checking account. The report alleges that this was an apparent attempt to balance the library’s books by replacing the cash taken from the library with the nonprofit’s funds.

“This substitution scheme totaled $3,709.95,” the report states.

One thing that made the loss of funds possible, according to the report, is that the library did not issue receipts for all collections, giving a receipt, manually, only when the customer asked for it.

“Since receipts were not always issued, we could not determine whether all collections for the library and on behalf of the Friends of the Library had been accounted for properly,” the report states. “In addition, the library did not maintain any records indicating the breakdown of cash and checks received.

“We were advised that beginning in May 2008, the deputy director was exclusively responsible for making bank deposits, preparing monthly collection reports, and issuing monthly checks to the Overton County Trustee.”