Staffing shortfall puts court collections work under scrutiny

MARINETTE — A staffing shortage in the Marinette County Clerk of Circuit Court’s office is delaying new submissions to Wisconsin’s state debt collection program, prompting committee members to question the financial impact and discuss ways to help.

At the public safety committee’s Tuesday meeting, Clerk Carrie Brazeau described an office struggling to retain employees while managing a growing workload.

Brazeau said the last state debt collection submission was completed in late January, covering December’s work.

“I do not have the staff to keep up with the work,” Brazeau told the committee.

The program collects qualifying debts owed to the county, with the state taking a commission from the amounts it recovers.

Supervisor Peter Noppenberg said the county figures showed $945,071 collected through the program in 2025. He estimated that delays in sending new files could mean “approximately $79,000 in income every month is not being pursued.”

Brazeau cautioned that the figures for submissions and collections were different. Money collected in a given month may come from cases submitted years earlier, she said and sending a file does not mean the county will receive payment immediately.

“There is a difference between how much you submit and how much you actually receive,” Brazeau said.

Brazeau also emphasized that her office has submitted cases to the program since 2016 and continues to receive payments on older accounts. Her concern, she said, is the backlog of new work — not the absence of collections from previously submitted files.

The office’s staffing constraints have accumulated over several years. Brazeau said a financial clerk left in October 2025, and a full-time deputy clerk position was placed in positional savings before she took office in January 2023.

Brazeau handles bookkeeping and other financial duties alongside the office’s day-to-day work. A part-time employee who worked on the financial workload for four months resigned saying there was too much work to complete in 20 hours a week, she reported.

Brazeau said the work requires specialized training and access to state systems, making it difficult to shift the tasks to staff in another county department. Employees must learn which court judgements and fees are eligible for submission and when cases can be sent, Brazeau explained.

“It is just not as easy as saying the words to think that we can just take somebody from a different office and plant them into my office,” Brazeau said.

She also described recent turnover and training demands. Several new employees have left after discovering the workload, while jury trials have increased: her office has handled 10 trials in 2026, compared to seven in each of 2024 and 2025.

The office was also short-staffed while Brazeau was away for a medical issue earlier in the year.

Committee members discussed whether filling the position in positional savings could help both the office and county revenue. Brazeau said it would provide a full-time deputy clerk to handle bookkeeping, but stressed that hiring alone would not immediately solve the problem: the employee would need time and training.

She stated she was working over 60 hours a week herself.

Committee Chair Tom Buetleman said members would meet with Brazeau for further brainstorming, focusing on support rather than blame.

The committee added collections to a future agenda but took no action on setting a deadline for clearing the backlog.