This is the same 57-year-old Jane Smith, Circuit Court Clerk for Madison County, Alabama who plead guilty to three federal misdemeanors in federal court recently for sharing her high-level password to the state’s judicial system computer records in 2009, avoided jail time, was fined $5000, and placed on one year probation.
She was first elected in 2000, and to her credit, is widely credited with modernizing the clerk’s office and making it among the most efficient in the state.
Jane Smith, Circuit Court Clerk, Madison County, Alabama
Madison County Circuit Clerk plans to stop processing passport applications, cites confusion over fees
Published: Friday, March 30, 2012, 7:08 AM
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — Madison County Circuit Clerk Jane Smith said Thursday she will soon stop collecting passport applications, which include a $25 processing fee she is personally allowed to keep.
Federal law sets the fee, and under Alabama law circuit clerks are allowed to keep passport handling fees. Smith said the law was in place before she was elected in 2001. The office began collecting the fees in 1977.
But Smith, who won a third term as clerk in the Republican primary March 13, said ongoing cuts to state court budgets and “continuing confusion over using these fees for official expenses” led her to decide to stop collecting the applications as of May 1.
The funds are not public, though they are collected as part of a public official‘s duties. Smith has said she deposits the collected fees into her bank account and Read the rest of this entry »
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