Superwomen

The Clerk of Court video tour, I would have to say, was by far the most boring video. Perhaps it was because the Clerk of Court has many offices within it. The panels of speakers included Pat Frank, the Clerk; Joann M Constantini, Director of Official Records; Dana Caranante, Director of Juvenile Court Operations; and Douglas Bakke, Director of Family Law, Domestic Violence, Collections, and Expungement. The entire panel covered many of the duties each office had to accomplish.

However, I am only going to talk about what really interested me. Pat Frank is an incredible interesting speaker and her work shows that she is an extremely driven person. In her life time she as accomplished so much such as being on the Hillsborough County School Board (1972), being elected to the Florida House of Representatives (1976), being elected to the Florida Senate (1978-88), being elected to the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners (1998 and 2002), and finally in 2004, Mrs. Frank was elected Clerk of the Circuit Court/Comptroller for Hillsborough County. Some could say that she is a Superwomen!

Also, she was the first woman elected "Most Effective First-Term Member" by the House and also the first woman nominated "Most Respected Senator" by her Senate colleagues. All if this information can be found on the Clerk of Circuit Court Web-site. Also, Frank has a blog called Frank Talk Blog.

During the lecture from Pat Frank, she spoke about the power struggles between the Courts and the Clerks office, which got really confusing, but as a woman who has been around the block, I suppose she was allowed to vent.

“We technically are not a part of the courts system. I don’t work under the judge, I’m not a lawyer, and we have about a 1,000 duties under the statue and even more after this last legislative session that we must take care of. But the Principle purpose of the Clerk’s office is to work for the people”, Frank said.

Another thing that Frank brought up was how important their office is to the public. Early this year, a breaking story hit the Tampa Bay about four former Walker Middle School flag football players having been charged with the crime. The crime was a sexual assault, but that’s not why the story is important in regards to the Clerk’s office. The state attorney’s office did omit a declaration from the boys and therefore it was processed and made public. That declaration was later used as a confession by the prosecutor.

“The story was taken down from the Web site after a judge signed an emergency order stopping TBO.com, The Tampa Tribune and News Channel 8 from running stories with the teen defendants' statements. That order was reversed Friday after the media outlets' attorneys appealed the injunction at a hearing,” according to KATE CALDWELL, News Channel 8 and JOSH POLTILOVE, The Tampa Tribune.

Click on the link below to read the entire story.
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/jul/31/311347/walker-middle-school-defendants-others-may-have-wi/news-breaking/

Overall, I feel that the lecture contained some very interesting information, and all of the speakers knew much about their particular office. Pat Frank just happened to be the most interesting speaker to me and therefore I felt she deserved to be the topic of my blog. However, if you want to know more about the other offices or people that were on the panel, start by going to http://www.hillsclerk.com/.