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Christine Croce: ready to take the bench
ASHLEY C. HEENEY
Legal News Reporter
Published: December 19, 2011
Barberton’s first female judge and first Republican judge, and therefore its first Republican female judge, will be taking the bench next month.
Christine Croce, currently the Barberton Clerk of Courts, is wrapping up her position Dec. 31 to move down to the hall to the chambers of Judge Greg Macko, who is retiring at the end of the month. She won election to his seat in November, defeating Democrat Steve Dyer.
Croce’s term as Barberton’s Clerk of Courts began Jan. 1, 2010 with a term ending Dec. 31, 2015.
To fill her seat, the Republican precinct committee in the court’s jurisdiction will have to make nominations and vote a new clerk into office.
“My ultimate career goal was to run and become a judge,” Croce said. “Did I think it would happen this fast? No.”
“I thought Judge Macko was going to run and stay six years and then six years down the line I would be looking at this. When he made up his mind he contacted me and told me he wasn’t running, I talked to quite a few people because I had just run two years ago and I didn’t want to be perceived as just running to run,” Croce said, “but it was a unique situation and I thought I’d be good at it, and thought I’d give it a shot.
Croce’s career started while at The University of Akron School of Law (class of 1994), during which time she worked as a law clerk for the city of Akron’s law department, from 1992 to 1995, and then worked as an assistant criminal prosecutor for Summit County from 1995 to 2001 for then prosecutor, now Supreme Court Chief Justice, Maureen O’Connor, who will swear Croce into office at Lake Anna Hall Jan. 9, 2012.
Prior to becoming clerk, Croce worked in the Summit County Sheriff’s Office from 2001 to 2009 as legal counsel then executive director.
As Barberton’s new clerk, Croce had immediate goals. “One of the big things we wanted to do––our people were handling credit card payments over the phone. It had to be within six months that we started online credit card payments (on the Barberton clerk’s website). That was only for criminal and traffic. This year we implemented credit card payments for civil.
“We [also] streamlined our postal service,” Croce said.
“Through our mail postage company, we were able to get onto an electronic certified mail process, which saves us about a $1.20 every time we send one out, and we go through $55,000 to $60,000 every year just in postage. So you can imagine, it’s saved us a lot of money.”
Additionally, Croce said the clerk’s office joined the Ohio Court Network through The Supreme Court of Ohio––a central database for Ohio’s courts to report their cases.
“I was really excited because I was on this task force designed by the Supreme Court. What they wanted to do was create a kind of an off the shelf case management system and get all clerk’s offices, whether it’s domestic, probate, common pleas, municipal––all putting the same data in the same place and then being able to transfer that.
“Right now we enter information when someone gets arrested on a felony because they get arraigned here, and we’d have to physically mail the information to Summit County (clerk) and they’d have to enter it,” Croce said. “And so we worked really hard for a year and half, we got all the way through the bidding process, picked a vendor, and then the Supreme Court cut their budget and so that’s been on a hold.
“But one of the exciting things was, the Supreme Court was going to host it, meaning they were going to store all of the documents. The record management system was going to be taken care of by them, so that meant servers and money we spent here on servers and data maintenance, we could have saved that money. It would eliminate duplication of work that people are doing.
“I have people in my own office that are duplicating work, then you send it out, and three or four people down at (Summit County Clerk) Dan Horrigan’s office are duplicating work. It was designed to alleviate that, as well as just make it more user friendly and really have a lot of access to information at your hands.
“It’s not dead in the water. It’s just whether or not individual jurisdictions now want to pay this (case management) company. The Supreme Court was going to pay for the implementation of it and then the individual jurisdictions would have to probably pay their own maintenance fee.
During her term as clerk, Croce said she’s also made the office more accessible to the public by offering extended Saturday hours. The end result was keeping the office’s weekday evening hours and limiting Saturday hours from 8 a.m. to noon.
Internally, she upgraded the office file system and has led a successful driver’s license amnesty program for the past two years.
Her courtroom experience, coupled with her administrative and legal experience and four years as the finance chair on Green City Council should bode well for her on the bench, she said, considering judges in Barberton handle the budget versus a court administrator handling it.
“I do think that administrative background helps,” Croce said. “When you take the bench, you have to be cognizant of the resources you have available as well as the financial as well as the program resources you have, and live within those restraints and get creative.”