Will County Circuit Clerk Candidate Marlene Carlson aims to "WEED OUT" wasteful spending and cronyism!
We are excited to announce that the Marlene Carlson for Will County Circuit Clerk campaign will be charging full steam ahead seeking victory against a 4 term incumbent in 2012! We are very proud and fortunate to have sailed through the Republican primary election unopposed!!
We will be working tirelessly until the November 2012 general election to enlighten voters about the wasteful spending and mismanagement of this office by the Democrat Pam McGuire.
Putting politics aside and just being practical, Will County needs a NEW Circuit Clerk with a clear vision, successful track record in information technology and systems management to make informed decisions in these areas.
The role of a Circuit Clerk in the 21st Century has dramatically changed. This role is no longer about stamping a few court documents and collecting a few fees on a small scale for the old “mom-and-pop one horse” county. Will County has grown so fast in such a short period of time.
The latest count in foot traffic in 2011 to our courthouse was almost 1 million people! One example of this overload, we have dozens and dozens of people waiting outside our courthouse just about every day to pay traffic tickets!! Is that really necessary? We need to simplify this process electronically and it needed to be done “yesterday!” It’s downright laughable, with everything else in our lives being done electronically, that our Circuit Court system still does practically everything in-person and on paper!!
Our Will County Circuit Clerk's office, under the management of Ms. McGuire for almost 16 years (4 terms), is egregiously riddled with inexperience, wasteful spending, cronyism and nepotism. Although the population of our county has grown substantially, very little has been done to simplify the workload of our 100+ skilled employees. We need to modernize our court system and we need to do this in a cost effective way. Our incumbent Circuit Clerk's solution to modernizing is by hiring expensive consulting firms to do this work. Just about every pet project over the past decade has been farmed out to Information Technology (IT) consulting firms at the expense of the taxpayer.
Have you heard the latest BUZZZZ out of Will County Circuit Clerk's office this past week? There is an RFP (Request for Proposal) out to IT consulting vendors once again to fill the void of leadership experience with the potential reward of $5-9 million contract for a new Case Management System. Looks like my Democratic opponent and her brilliant CIO Enright once again cannot manage their own Information Technology (IT) projects in-house and must "Farm Out" this work at the expense of the taxpayer.
Hopefully our Will County taxpayers won't have to cough up the dough again to fund another "FLOP" project like the last IT consulting firm we've been fitting the bill for, URL Integration out of Colorado!!
So much for folks in OUR local government supporting local in-state jobs. Hasn't Illinois lost enough jobs already? It's a slap in the face for the hard working Will County taxpayer who does everything he/she can to keep their jobs and homes afloat in the state of Illinois only to find these dollars shipped out of state!! Pretty soon they'll be farming our jobs out to the BRIC countries to do our work!! Check out this link to latest RFP for Will County Case Management System; yet another example of the potential for wasteful spending for another flop project at the hands of our Circuit Clerk.
Speaking of "FLOP" projects and millions of dollars wasted. Ever hear of E-Citations program? Has that project ever gotten off the ground? How many millions have we spent on this project???
Sounds clear to me that after 4 terms in office, McGuire and her CIO have run out of ideas, and that hiring expensive consultants at the expense of the taxpayer is their only hope. Why do we elect people to these offices when they have no experience or original thoughts of their own? It is time for positive change in Will County government. I strongly believe that I can provide that positive change. Elect Marlene Carlson for Will County Circuit Clerk 2012! http://www.carlson4circuitclerk.com
The Guru
12:37 pm on Sunday, April 22, 2012
For a person boasting of her vast knowledge of IT.... Your website is cheap and thrown together with microsoft office and hosted in Arizona. So much for "not farming it out to other other firms" and "keeping jobs in Illinois". You may be able to fool the computer iliterate. But you cant B.S. an IT guy with case management experience, public safety experience, and a great nose for cow pies. God knows what type of equipment they have running and the probbably non existant budget. The word "modernizing" is usualy another word for throwing money at it.
mcarlson1980
2:15 pm on Monday, April 23, 2012
I am not one to spend money on things that shouldn't cost anything. I designed this website myself one Friday evening and it didn't cost me anything. I paid $40 to host it for an entire year. If you say $40 bucks for one year is too much then perhaps you might need to shop around a little and price things out. I farmed the work to myself:) I would not BS anyone. Thanks for reading my blog post.
The Guru
7:27 am on Tuesday, May 22, 2012
My web server sits on a VM in my home office. I pay for the internet anyway, so my total cost is electricity (which is tax deductable for a home office). Not trying to one up you, but there is more than one way to skin a cat.
So I have some questions:
Do you really expect Will County's IT Department to rewrite a case management system in house?
Wont you need dedicated project managers, developers, business analysts, quality assurance testers, systems integrators, and an entire support structure of help desk and IT personel?
Should county government be in the business of writing its own software instead of finding local vendors to provide pre packaged solutions to save time and money?
Marlene Carlson
10:50 am on Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Do we really need to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on one GIANT project that may or may not be successful (due to poor leadership or budgetary issues) or could we successfully complete multiple smaller projects over time? 15-16 years is a lot of time to pass before someone decides to do something about a growing problem. One example: when you remodel a house you go room-to-room and complete one project at a time; "most" people have a limited budget and need a place to live. Implementing a successful E-Filing and Document Management system would be a good start. Have we made significant progress with that? Nope! E-File and DMS just takes paper docs and stores them electronically. There are many software vendors on the market today that sell canned CMS products. Could we manage projects in-house? Most certainly, with experienced leadership, but, this does not need to be done all at once. One may argue Illinois Supreme Court limitations, etc., however, this pilot project has "barely" gotten off the ground in Will County. http://www.state.il.us/court/ebusiness/efiling.asp. Other counties in Illinois have achieved so much more than Will. It is time for NEW leadership! I really hope someday you will agree once I am elected. Have a great day!
The Guru
7:38 am on Thursday, May 24, 2012
Okay. So if Will County is so far behind because they have poor leadership how did the other counties do it? I would venture to guess that they hired consultants to complete the projects for them. After all, both you and I know that nobody on this planet is a Subject Matter Expert in every form of technology and implementation. Eventually you need the right person for the right job. I assume you would agree since your resume lists you as a consultant at one point.
By the way, please don't take this as a personal attack. Its not every day I get a direct line to a person running for office in my county. Especially someone that's in the same career field as I am. I plan on asking some tough questions to see if you are worth your salt. But, to be brutally honest, I think your making broad claims like most politicians. My fear is, If you are elected, and you get to see what the actual problems are you may melt down like a certain president of ours when you find you can't fulfill your promises.
Jason Alexander
8:59 am on Thursday, May 24, 2012
Glad to see you have the cajones to duke it out in a public forum. Would like to see your 6-step plan to replace the case management system, instead of just throwing stones.
What technology would you employ? .net? java? SAP? Fortran? What are your specific plans to develop maintainable code?
As others have posted, it's tough to re-invent wheel. If you did forgo the many 3rd party options, would you license out Will Co.'s system? With 100+ counties in Illinois alone, surely others have or shall cross this bridge.
I agree, time has long since past for Govt to quit wasting our precious time with antiquated people and systems.
Marlene Carlson
10:02 am on Friday, May 25, 2012
I really love the fact that folks have so many questions! If you would like to meet for a coffee sometime to discuss my plan for the Circuit Clerk's office that would be wonderful. Please let me know if you are interested in attending and I will set something up. Thanks & Regards!
Sudo su
4:08 pm on Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Marlene, are you going to work harder than you did when you worked in Chicago? Accusing people of harassment and crying about not get OT?
WhistleblowersTom&Jenn
3:16 am on Monday, January 21, 2013
Mrs. Carlson,
One of the most horrible problems in Will County that is caused by Pamela J. McGuire and other clerks is that they tell non-custodial fathers that call to ask for information about heir own cases to drive in and ask in person, clerks will lie and say that they can't tell the father, they'll even say he's wanted if he isn't.
When a father politely insists that the clerks are required by law to answer his questions (assuming they're reasonable and the father isn't being rude), clerks often threaten the father with false arrest and even file false police reports him for making threats that he never made.
This is causing tax payers more than anything. This is forcing innocent and loving fathers to know absolutely nothing about their own family ourt cases that they aren't being served notice about, so that the fathers end up with arrest warrants issued for not showing up, excessive "child support" orders, and even a father losing his God given right to see his children.
It's all about Title IV-D, Title V-E, VAWA, and other federal grants and it's not only causing more monetary damage than ahything else in this country is, but it's giving fathers no chance to ever stay out of jail or at least homeless shelters, while it's forcing children into being bastards.
Would you step up and try to put and end to this?
WhistleblowersTom&Jenn
3:17 am on Monday, January 21, 2013
P.S.: It looks like Pam's friends are the ones that commented before I did.