The Shelby County Clerk’s Office has cleared half of 34 crates of backlogged dealership packets that contain undelivered paperwork for car titles and registrations, officials said.
Newly elected County Clerk La Sonya Hall and her staff found pallets containing the crates during a spot inspection of branch locations within the first week after she took office Sept. 1. The backlog was “inherited” from the previous county clerk, Wanda Halbert.
“We came in and thought we’d immediately hit the ground running,” said Hall. “When we stumbled upon this, it immediately had us recalibrate.”
To cover the cost to process the pallets, Hall made a quick visit to the county commission, which approved over $6 million from a clerk’s office reserve account.
Some of the money pays for overtime costs to prepare packages for mailing. But the bulk of the funding will be allocated to technology upgrades to replace outdated computers used by employees. Most of their devices are slow and struggle to handle the software provided by the county. A spinning wheel lingers on their screens, along with a growing line of customers at their stations.
So far, the backlog is being cleared swiftly, considering the volume of discovered documents. Half of the crates have been emptied in less than a month, and 17 remained as of this writing. A single crate contains 20 car dealership packets, each with 253 unprocessed applications, Hall said.
County clerk officials also found five packets with more than $12,000 of unprocessed checks from dealerships and 15 packets that may contain unprocessed credit card payments. Both forms of payment represent revenue for the county and the state, and revenue from dealership payments is typically submitted monthly from the clerk’s office to the state. More payments could be found in the remaining pallets.
“That’s why there is such an urgency to address it, because we are backlogged and all of us know we have a certain amount of time to get these checks processed,” said Hall.
The longtime public servant credited office workers for the turnaround.
“What gets lost in this is the dedication of the employees,” said Hall. “They volunteered to work overtime on Saturdays. They work hard on Wednesdays to get these packets done. Several of them work two to three hours after the office closes now to get these packets up to snuff.”
A “dealership department” of three is working toward helping Hall fulfill a campaign pledge to keep the doors of eight branch offices open, said Hall. And every staff member dedicates a few hours every third Wednesday of the month.
“The middle of the month is typically the lowest volume of clients coming through the doors. Wednesdays just happen to be the smallest volume where we can direct our attention and focus on the dealer packets,” explained Hall. “Rather than have two or three work on the backlog, we can devote all of our clerks and people who work at the counters.”
Since employees began addressing the problem in mid-September, the holidays have been set as a tentative deadline for completion.
“What we were able to do in the week from September 12th to the 18th was work the dealer packets while still servicing individual customers,” said Hall. “We were literally working our team in a dual function. They were clearing dealer packets, but they were also servicing individual citizens. We have worked hard not to disrupt the daily flow of work.”
Commissioners of both political parties, impressed by Hall’s aggressive and honest approach to the backlog, all voted in favor of granting her $6 million request.
“I am extremely humbled by the unanimous support that we have from commissioners,” said Hall, whose meeting stood in stark contrast to many of Halbert’s visits to the county commission.
During Halbert’s two terms, the clerk’s office endured frequent disruptions and issues. For example, an early warning sign of the current backlog occurred in 2022 when thousands of vehicle plates and tags went undelivered during the pandemic.
A forensic audit in 2024, ordered by State Comptroller Jason Mumpower, was supported by some members of the commission after Halbert submitted faulty financial reports to the county trustee. Problems continued to snowball. And two outside attempts to oust Halbert failed, though some commissioners supported the efforts.
For her part, the new county clerk is looking to the future and looking for ways to avoid her predecessor’s failures.
“We’ll start to really try to get this backlog behind us,” said Hall. “That will give us an opportunity to assess where we need to be to never let this happen again.”
