Pearl River County Chancery Clerk Melinda Bowman made an appeal to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday for special funds for records restoration.
Bowman said the previous Board awarded the former chancery clerk, David Earl Johnson, $50,000 a year to digitally scan deeds and other county records.
In a phone interview on Wednesday, Johnson said he successfully scanned 31 years of county documents.
Annual financial reports from the Chancery Clerk’s office dating back to at least 2011 show Johnson was paid $50,000 each year for records restoration, except in 2015 when the department was paid $12,500.
“I spent all of that,” Johnson said. “I made a contract with Delta to help me do so much each year.”
Bowman said the county still has millions of pages of deeds and other records that date back to the county’s establishment in the 1800s.
“If we had a fire, it would be catastrophic for this county,” Bowman said. “If a person doesn’t have their deed in their hand, they would be gone.”
Bowman asked for the Board to continue to fund the full $50,000 a year so she can continue the scanning process.
“Here you have a clerk that wants to use the full $50,000 and not take a penny to put in my pocket,” Bowman said. “I want to preserve as many of our records as we can.”
District I Supervisor Donald Hart asked Bowman if the $50,000 would be enough to ensure all records were scanned in the coming year.
“No, but if I had a quarter of a million it would be done,” Bowman said.
Bowman previously said that in five years, over $250,000 had been spent on the project. She said that was a lot of money for only about 30 years of records.
“We’ve failed the people of PRC by not preserving those records,” Bowman said.
She said the previous clerk and Board were responsible for that.
“None of the court records have ever been scanned prior to me coming into office,” Bowman said.
Johnson said his department was not scanning court records at the time because he was already scanning the land deeds and “didn’t want to put that kind of burden on the county all at one time.”
Bowman said she has been scanning the documents for each court case prior to a judge hearing the case.
By the end of the year, she hopes to have current electronic files on every case that went to court this year, she said.
“It might take years to do this, but we will get it done,” Bowman said.
She said her staff continues to scan new documents from her office into the Mississippi Electronic Court System.
However, the older records will have to be scanned by a private company like Delta, who Johnson hired, because their records are printed on larger plats and bound books that require more technical work, Bowman said.
“Right now it’s not safe and secure, I want to make sure that they are safe and secure for future generations,” Bowman said. “I don’t want to just save the records, but eventually make them easily accessible to the public.”