FAYETTE - On Jan. 2, Howard County Clerk Mark Hill drove the 60 miles from Fayette to Jefferson City to hand deliver a letter to the office of Secretary of State Robin Carnahan.

Don Shrubshell photos

Howard County Clerk Mark Hill, above, talks about the difficulties he has had running the Howard County clerk’s office. At left, Howard County Commissioners Lowell Eaton, left, and Howard Black, below, look for county budget information with fellow Commissioner Richard Conrow. Commissioners have fielded complaints about voter registration records.

The three-page letter, which Hill had hammered out the night before, contained Hill’s explanation for why his office had failed to comply with state and federal election laws. His office was woefully understaffed, Hill wrote. He had suffered from health problems. Someone else caused apparent discrepancies in voter registrations.

The letter also described political tension that existed in the Howard County Courthouse - a tension Hill said was so thick "you could cut it with a knife."

"With absolutely no exaggeration, there is outright hatred of me by, if not most, then a good portion of the people working at the courthouse," Hill wrote.

Hill’s explanation to Michael Bushmann, deputy secretary for elections, is the latest sign that perhaps the job has outgrown the capacity of Hill, a Democrat who has been county clerk for the past 13 years.

The letter to Bushmann capped a yearlong series of correspondence that dealt with problems with the voter registration records in Howard County. The latest inquiry by the secretary of state’s office wondered whether some voters whose names were not in precinct registration books were allowed to register and vote at the precinct level during last year’s April 3 municipal election.

Bushmann had written Hill on Dec. 14, pointing out state law "prohibits election judges from allowing individuals whose names do not appear in the precinct registers to vote without the express sanction of the election authority," who, in that case, would be Hill.

Hill responded that if peoples’ names were wrongfully added to the precinct registers, "a few election judges may have taken matters into their own hands."

Hill wrote - in capital letters - "YES, MARK HILL HAS NO PART IN THIS MATTER AND HAS NOT DONE ANYTHING WRONG!!!"

The issue of the precinct voter rolls is only one of the recent problems for Hill. In December, state Auditor Susan Montee released an audit that criticized his office for the handling of federal taxes, late payments to vendors and the failure to pay some insurance premiums for county workers. The three members of the Howard County Commission, all Democrats, viewed the issues as serious lapses in county business operations that have resulted in Internal Revenue Service fines against the county.

"It’s created problems," Eastern District Commissioner Richard Conrow said.

But the commission has no supervisory authority over the clerk’s office. And while the secretary of state’s office can advise and coach local clerks such as Hill, it has no legal power to force him to do anything.

"Depending on the violation or the issue, we could refer the matter to an appropriate law enforcement agency," said Mindy Mazur, a spokeswoman for Carnahan’s office. "We don’t have local enforcement authority. We are looking into any and all possible resolutions to ensure Howard County’s compliance with state and federal election laws, and this could include referrals to the local prosecutor and the Department of Justice."

If anything, Hill is a proven political survivor. First elected in 1994, he took office under the cloud of an allegation that he had forged absentee ballot applications. The charges were later dropped. In 2003, Hill was convicted and fined $500 for destroying a political yard sign of a candidate for another county office. At that time, the county’s Democratic Committee passed a resolution censuring him and calling on him to resign. He refused and was later re-elected.

In an interview last week in his office, Hill, 52, said he loved his job and planned to run for it again when he comes up for re-election in 2010.

"From the day I got here until the present day, my work routine has been work, work, work," Hill said. "That’s all I do. I love it. You couldn’t do it unless you loved it."

"Mouse droppings"

The latest person to cast a shadow on Hill’s management style is Jody Winn, who between September and Dec. 31 served as the deputy Howard County clerk, working in an office that adjoins Hill’s. Last week in an interview, Winn said it was an employment experience like none other.

"I’ve worked a lot of places, but I’ve never worked with anybody like him," said Winn, who spent her last day in the office on Tuesday, when she helped train her successor.

Describing Hill, she said, "He’s incompetent. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be doing in that office. He doesn’t have a clue. I don’t want to sound mean or nasty about it, but it’s just unbelievable."

Winn originally is from Glasgow. Last year, she and her husband moved back to the area after living in Reno, Nev., for three years. She said she heard about an opening for a deputy clerk in Hill’s office, applied and got the job. "Flabbergasted" was the way she described her initial reaction.

"I couldn’t believe the way things were disorganized and the stuff that was missing," Winn said.

Winn said there are stacks of voter registration cards that cannot be entered into a computer because Hill has not created a map that would help identify the precinct where a registered voter would cast a ballot. She said the secretary of state’s office had asked Hill to create such a map.

"People need to be registered to vote, but they can’t be because their address was never put into the computer," Winn said. "He never got a map made, and therefore there is a stack of cards there that cannot be entered from 2006 and 2007. There are going to be several people in Howard County that can’t vote because they weren’t registered."

She said she found unopened envelopes from state agencies and from the IRS. Then Hill brought in two boxes of voter registration cards. Some were wet and covered with straw and mouse droppings.

"There were letters from the state and from other counties that hadn’t been opened for two to three years," Winn said.

For county clerks to keep their voter rolls current, counties notify each other when a voter moves from one jurisdiction to another. At the same time, state agencies provide counties with lists of people who have died or who have been convicted of crimes that would make them ineligible to vote.

"These letters weren’t opened," Winn said. "They were in the boxes with the cards and had never been opened."

Winn said that when she would ask Hill a question, instead of responding to her verbally, he would write her a letter, emboss it with the county seal, enclose it in an envelope and put it on her desk.

"He loves to spend hours typing letters," she said.

Winn said she didn’t know how to work without help from Hill and that she consulted the secretary of state’s office about how to proceed.

"I know he’s mad at me because I sent some papers to the state," Winn said. "I was trying to get the voter registration straightened out. It was such a mess. I didn’t know what else to do. If I was going to do a job, I was going to do it in the right way. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. And I can’t believe that nobody can do anything about it. It just amazes me."

Winn said she resigned out of frustration.

Hill, in his letter to Bushmann, said he believed Winn had sent materials from his office to the secretary of state because she was influenced by his courthouse enemies.

"Hold the fort"

A photograph of President Franklin Roosevelt hangs behind Hill’s desk in his Spartanly-furnished courthouse office. Two box fans circulate the air in the small room. Hill said he likes the background noise created by the fans.

Since he first took office, Hill said, only he and a deputy have handled all the business of the county clerk’s office. Winn was one of four different people to serve as Hill’s deputy in the past year. Hill said people leave because the job is so hard.

The duties have become overwhelming, Hill added. He said he needs a third employee just to handle election duties and the maintenance of voter registration rolls.

"I’m at the point of survival," Hill said. "It’s like being in a battle. We now are doing all we can to hold the fort."

Winn said two people working efficiently are sufficient to handle the clerk’s duties.

Hill had prepared a written list that described all the duties of the clerk: paying invoices for county bills, preparing the annual budget, typing commission minutes, maintaining voter registration records and preparing for elections, writing annual reports for the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the state Tax Commission, providing a yearly financial statement, processing tax rates for the county’s political subdivisions, responding to constituent requests and preparing the county’s payroll, including the handling of the W2 and 1099 tax forms, paying health insurance premiums as well as the county’s contributions to the County Employees Retirement Fund.

The county clerk’s annual salary, set by statute, is $36,000. The deputy clerk is paid $18,344 a year. To keep up with the demands, Hill said he works from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and then comes into the office sometimes late into the night to keep up.

But correspondence from Carnahan’s office, obtained through Missouri’s Open Meetings and Records Law, and the Montee audit show that Hill’s working arrangement is not getting the job done.

Bushmann’s most recent letter to Hill said the secretary of state had contacted Hill’s office "numerous times about your noncompliance with state and federal election laws." The letter said that in addition to telephone calls and personal meetings, the office had written Hill four times asking him to maintain voter registration lists as required by federal law.

"Howard County voting applications may not have been properly processed in a timely manner as required by state and federal law," one letter said.

"It has now come to our attention that some individuals may have voted in the Howard County election held on April 3, 2007, although they were not properly registered to vote in Howard County," another said.

In October, Bushmann wrote Hill to say that the clerk’s office might be in possession of voter registration cards that were not entered into the statewide voter registration database in a timely manner.

"Please be aware that failure to comply with these legal requirements may result in the secretary of state referring a local election authority to the appropriate enforcement authorities," Bushmann’s letter said.

Mary Beth Tinker, who lives in Fayette, said she knew the voter registration rolls had problems when she went canvassing door to door before the November 2006 general election.

"It was so outdated," she said. "We found it was difficult to use because we would so often come to a house and find the person had moved or hadn’t been there for a long time. The records were in terrible shape. It makes it difficult to reach the voters and really involve them in the democratic process."

Some county commissioners were aware people were not being well served.

"I have had complaints from several folks that they had registered but they weren’t getting their voting card," Presiding Commissioner Lowell Eaton said. "At times I have gone down and told him I had complaints."

The commissioners also knew the findings in Montee’s audit were coming because some of the issues had emerged earlier. The audit covered a two-year period ending Dec. 31, 2006. The audit found that Hill made errors on federal tax returns.

"Even after receiving numerous Internal Revenue Service notices regarding payment and/or reporting errors, neither the county clerk nor the county commission made sufficient efforts to resolve the problems and satisfy liabilities," the audit said. In 2006, the county paid $13,000 to the IRS for unpaid taxes, penalties and interest. Last year, the county owed the IRS $22,000 for unresolved errors pertaining to previous years.

The audit laid the problems on Hill’s doorstep, saying, "The errors and discrepancies occurred because the county clerk did not have adequate controls for ensuring the amounts paid to the IRS and amounts reported to the IRS were accurate and consistent."

Western District Commissioner Howard Black said that three months before the audit Hill had told the commission the IRS problem had been addressed. But the audit said the problem still existed, Black said, and "that was the first thing we should take care of immediately after the audit."

On Dec. 26, the county commission wrote the IRS, saying in the future, all communications should be directed to the commission rather than the clerk’s office.

"Local boy"

Hill grew up in Howard County, graduated from Fayette High School in 1973 and obtained a political science degree from Central Methodist College in 1977. He spent 20 years in the Army, in both active duty and National Guard roles. His specialty, he said, was personnel.

Before he and his wife divorced, they ran an employment service in Columbia. He now lives on a farm that adjoins his mother’s. Together they have 1,300 acres where they raise cattle.

"I’m a local boy, and I love our people," Hill said in an interview. "But there have been a lot of people who just hate my guts. There’s no other way to put it."

Asked why he thinks that is, Hill said it was systemic and goes way back. He said he was more formal than most others in Howard County. He wears a coat and tie to the office.

"I’m a friendly guy, outgoing," he said. "In many ways, people don’t understand why I’m not exactly like them."

When asked about the troubles of his office, Hill said he takes full responsibility for them but added the growth in the paperwork had overwhelmed his two-person staff and there isn’t enough money to hire more people.

"All of us here in the courthouse are on a bare-bones budget," he said. "That’s just the way it is."

Then he brings up something no one else seemed to know about - that he has a heart problem and that the medicine he takes to thin his blood affects his performance. He said he had a heart attack in May.

"I had never told anybody really of my medical situation, especially the heart attack," Hill said.

He said under the effects of the medication he finds himself redoing tasks repeatedly. Using a calculator, he finds himself doing the same computation two and three times.

"That’s the issue for me that goes on," Hill said. "It takes me longer than it did, but I always maintain I work until I’m finished."

When a county employee asks Hill a question, about health insurance, for example, he said he writes the person a formal reply. With regard to the county’s bills, Hill said he checks each one thoroughly before it is paid.

"I have a long procedure that I go through that keeps me busy from early in the morning until late in the afternoon checking over every bill the county has to pay," Hill said. "I’m really proud of that."

He said the "sad part" of some of the problems of his office was that some correspondence and payments that have been faulted were all ready to go out. The difficult part, the preparation, had been completed, but they were just not mailed. Why?

"I’m the leader, so I take the blame," he said. "I don’t know why those things didn’t go out. I’m still sick about it because that was the easy part."

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