More money to expand public access to court records and offer more ways to pay fees will appear in the chancery clerk’s budget request for 2013, Chancery Clerk Donna Farris Hardy said.

Calculating those costs is a work in progress, but the office’s tech needs are pressing, the first-term chancery clerk told the Port City Kiwanis on Thursday.

“This is something I need to do, and I need to do it now,” Hardy said.

Since 2008, court briefs in Warren, Madison, Scott, DeSoto and Harrison counties have been moved electronically into the Mississippi Electronic Courts system as part of a pilot test the state Supreme Court wants to go statewide. The system allows people to search cases online without being in the courthouse. Users pay $10 to register and renew and 20 cents to view documents. Currently, chancery courts from the five counties participate, but only civil cases from Warren, Harrison and Madison circuit courts are being scanned.

One remedy would be to separate two of five computers in the office’s land records room connected only to the county’s server and dedicate them to the online service.

“It’s just like you do to your home,” Hardy said. “It would only support the MEC program.”

In February, a new server was installed for $69,400, a cost the county will finance over time. Despite that, the nine-person chancery clerk staff is burdened daily by managing separate platforms for the courts, land records and hard copy, which she considers a system by itself.

“This chancery clerk’s office simply does not have the manpower to continue to run these systems simultaneously,” Hardy said.

The office was funded at $222,980 for fiscal 2012. Supervisors begin mulling the 2013 budget this month.

Paying past-due taxes by credit or debit card would eliminate cash, occasionally in the thousands, “going over the counter,” Hardy said. The hurdle, she said, is minimizing hidden charges for the public, namely credit card fees.

“Costs to offer it won’t be that big of a deal,” she said. “My concern is negotiating something on these fees, as the tax collector’s office has done. I really don’t want to have to pass the credit card charge to our customers. I’d love to have credit cards. On land redemptions, some of these people can be coming in there with $20,000. You calculate the fee to the credit card company on that, it may not be as attractive.”

Hardy, 57, won the office in a four-way race last November, succeeding Dot McGee who retired after 12 years. Chancery clerks keep all records for chancery courts and boards of supervisors in the state. They record and store deeds and collect delinquent property taxes.