The problems at the DeKalb Recorders Court are now on the front burner for the DeKalb Board of Commissioners.

Commissioner Sharon Barnes Sutton, who chairs the board’s Public Safety and General Government Committee, said Thursday that the three-member committee will be working “expeditiously” to fix the long-standing problems at the court.

“I don’t have a date or a time line, but this is the number one priority for us,” she said. “We have to put policy and resources in place to rectify the problems.”

Barnes Sutton and Commissioners Lee May and Kathie Gannon, who make up the public safety committee, took a field trip to the Recorders Court during the committee’s July 10 meeting and heard from Chief Judge Joy Walker, who gave them a tour of the court’s operations.

Barnes Sutton said she was surprised at what they found.

“Every filing system was overwhelmed,” she said. “She has no place to file stuff. And the long lines of people waiting. That’s a problem. People are innocent until proven guilty and they have to wait in long lines because the court does not have enough space to hear cases.”

The Recorders Court has been at the eye of a storm over up to $20 million in uncollected traffic and code violation tickets, the indictments of former employees in a ticket-fixing scam, and a civil probe by a DeKalb grand jury.

More than 30-pages of e-mails and letters from the court dating back to 2003, requested by CrossRoadsNews last week, documented years of attempts by Walker to get resources and personnel to serve warrants and improve the court’s efficiency, and to secure adequate space to hold court hearings. Walker says she has been asking county government for help since she arrived at there in 2002.

“I have made numerous requests to the administration for improvements at the Recorders Court,” she wrote DeKalb CEO Burrell Ellis in December 2008. “Each and every request that I have made has been denied by DeKalb County’s Finance Department and the Board of Commissioners.”

Barnes Sutton said it was time that someone visited the Bobby Burgess Building where the court is housed to see the problems firsthand.

“We see stuff on the news,” she said. “We hear rumors and gossips. I wanted to see what was going on over there and what needed to be done.”

Prior to the visit, Barnes Sutton said no one had been over to the court to see its operations.

“We wanted to separate the politics from it,” she said, adding that the problems at the court are long standing and has fallen through the cracks for the previous and this administration.

“She [Walker] said that every time she sent in a strategic plan, there was a change in police chief and she had to start all over,” Barnes Sutton said. “Since she has been there, there have been five police chiefs.”

In a Feb. 23, 2007, memo, Walker said that the Police Department, which used to dispose “one million plus” warrants a year for the Recorders Court, informed her that “petty offense” warrants were not a priority because of the CEO’s new initiative to get more police on the street serving felony and misdemeanor warrants.”

On Monday Shelia Edwards, Ellis’ chief communications officer, said the Dec. 17, 2008 letter Walker wrote to then CEO-elect Burrell Ellis outlining the court’s problems went to his transition committee and not to him.

“It’s been seven months,” Edwards said. “Why hasn’t she written to this administration?”

Ellis did not return phone calls by press time Thursday.

Barnes Sutton said she has met with Public Safety Director William Miller and plans to meet with Ellis to discuss the court’s problems.

“The CEO has said that public safety is his number one priority,” she said. “This is a public safety issue.”