Clerks cost Fulton County $1 million

After the meeting, the official minutes are prepared and all official documents that accompany them are stored. Massey's office also employs a chief deputy clerk and, a front-desk receptionist and an aide who is available to commissioners who need him to drive them somewhere or run an errand.

The tab: more than $1 million.

The Fulton County clerk's budget dwarfs clerks' budgets in other core metro Atlanta counties.  DeKalb County's five-member clerk office has a budget of $452,915.  Cobb County's three-member office operates on a budget of  $397,049.  And in Gwinnett County, the one-person clerk budget is $107,464.

"Every government is organized differently .... We do a lot of things on behalf of the board of commissioners,"  Massey said, explaining the differences. He pointed to electronic voting for commissioners at the meetings and producing verbatim minutes.

Most clerks' minutes are summaries of what is said. Gwinnett Commissioner Chairman Charles Bannister, however, said his county keeps a verbatim record for the public,  too -- but in the form of a video recording -- without having to hire a contractor to prepare it. “We not only have minutes, we have tapes and DVDS," he said.

But for critics of county spending, the Fulton clerk's  budget offers a snapshot of potential waste they suspect runs through far larger department budgets -- a particular concern at a time when county tax revenues are dropping and the 2010 budget adopted in January was $13 million less than 2009's.

“That is a million-dollar item and there are many items that are multi-million (areas) that should be reduced," said John Sherman, head of the Fulton County Taxpayers Foundation. "[But] there is no reason to have that many clerks."

Fulton Commission Chairman John Eaves said the clerk's budget and needs should be compared to those in urban areas around the country rather than to others in metro Atlanta. He noted that the Fulton clerk's office has a receptionist to assist the public.

"We stress customer service," he said.  "I do believe that the dynamics of Fulton County is different than Cobb and Gwinnett and the range of  services that we have is commensurate with the funding."

Massey enumerated the duties his office performs that others do not: They signed off on 240 indigent burials that the county paid for last year, attended 76 meetings ranging from commission meetings to public hearings; booked their travel, ran a massive project to get historical board documents online;  and certified domestic partnership. One job description includes being available to run commissioners errands and serve as driver when requested.

Commissioners Lynne Riley and  Nancy Boxill note they have used the driver  service. "That is entirely at the pleasure of the individual commissioner," said Riley, who represents north Fulton. "His role is to provide assistance to a commissioner as needed."

Massey said he has tried to expand the duties of that staffer to include more substantive work in records management. "He has the skills," Massey said. "We are a records office. That is what we do, records."

Some Fulton County commissioners acknowledge that the clerk's office may be doing work that could be assigned to members of their paid staffs. (Each of the seven commissioners is entitled to hire four staffers.)

Riley said Massey recently suggested that some of the record keeping -- such as managing expenses for individual commissioners -- could be shifted to the commissioners' staffs. Riley agreed.

"I said maybe in a cost-cutting environment that could be rolled back to the commission staffs," she said.

Boxill, whose district includes downtown Atlanta and parts of the southeast and southwest sections of the city, said an examination of the office functions might be warranted -- although it would be low on the priority list.

"I don't even know how many people are in the clerk's office," she said. "Could we do the same functions with fewer people? I don't know the answer to that but I think it is a legitimate question."

As things stand, however, Massey said his office couldn't function with fewer people.

"Actually we are really stressed and stretched," he said. "Accuracy is what is most important and you have to have to have quality control. We handle a huge amount of information."