Money Motivates These Georgia County Court Clerks

 

Crazy and corrupt it may be, but the law in Georgia allows county court clerks to keep as their personal income the $35 processing fees they collect when their courthouse is used as an acceptance facility for U.S. passport applications. 

Atlanta News First, Superior court clerks legally pocketing thousands in passport processing fees:

In 2021, Cobb’s superior court clerk raked in more than $220K, while Fulton’s pocketed $360K in passport processing fees, on top of their salaries.

Impressive! Government is not a philanthropic activity, after all. And, mind you, the clerks earned that money the hard way - $35 at a time. 

I hadn't known that there are alternatives to using a U.S. Post Office or U.S. Passport Agency or Center when applying for a passport, but there are, and paying a $35 fee to those alternative acceptance facilities is legit, actually. 

So what I want to know now is where does Georgia find court clerks with the incredible stamina and enough hours in the day to process that many passport applications? I mean, the one in Fulton County is doing more than 10,000 applications a year, or 27 or so every day assuming she works 365 days a year. When you figure in that she must also be doing some Fulton County work, too, that is really extraordinary. 

According to the linked Atlanta News First story, some Georgia legislators are planning to end this sweet deal by amending state law to prohibit clerks keeping the fees as personal income. 

Well, I guess that's the right thing to do. But then, don't expect those clerks to show the same superhuman motivation when they're processing those passports for free.

Passport Peeper to be Penalized

According to U.S. District Court documents posted at The Smoking Gun (read them here), a former State Department employee who improperly satisfied his idle curiosity about the Passport Records of the Rich and Famous has signed a plea agreement admitting to unauthorized computer access.

A former Department of State employee illegally accessed confidential computer files to examine the passport records of 150 "celebrities, actors, musicians, comedians, models, politicians, athletes, members of the media" and others, according to federal court records ... [Dwayne] Cross accessed the passport files over a five-and-a-half year period ending in August 2007, according to one court filing, which noted that he viewed the confidential information out of "idle curiosity" and did not "download, copy, print, forward, share, market, sell, or otherwise disseminate" the records.

I wonder how often unauthorized peeping happens at the Internal Revenue Service? Their records must be a whole lot more interesting than anything you could find n a passport file.

Passport to Prison

Two types of passport criminality were in the news today. First, the State Department announced mass arrests in a passport fraud investigation (Diplomatic Security Investigation Results in 112 Suspects Charged With Federal Passport Fraud ).

And second, one of the State Department contractor employees who was caught peeping into passport application files several months ago was charged with unauthorized computer access, a Class A misdemeanor (Contractor Charged In Passport Snoop).