Sometimes, payback can be sweet.

Especially when it means taxpayers getting back money that’s rightfully theirs. In this case, $300,000 of the $818,251.75 former Circuit Clerk Shelly Ashley-Palmertree owes Warren County in excessive salary above the state-mandated cap for circuit and chancery clerks and questionable subcontractor payments she made to her father and predecessor in office, Larry Ashley, from 2006 to 2011. Money that should have gone into the county’s general fund.

The judge’s decision came after two years of haggling and battling in court over Palmertree’s claim she didn’t owe the money.

“I’m glad to see it. I’ll be glad to get it in my hands,” Warren County Board of Supervisors President Bill Lauderdale said. “It’s been a long time coming.”

The June 29 ruling by a Hinds County Chancellor requires Western Surety Co., the bonding agency that issued the $100,000 public official bonds for all three of Palmertree’s terms in office, to pay the county $300,000, money the company is required under contract with Palmertree to pay to cover losses caused by her misdeeds.

Western Surety tried to avoid paying the money, claiming the Warren County Board of Supervisors and State Auditor Stacey Pickering failed to tell the company about the claims against Palmertree, but the judge would have none of it and reminded Western Surety of its obligations to make good on the former clerk’s actions.

The question now is whether the county will recover the remaining portion of the money Palmertree owes.

Palmertree is presently serving a five-year prison sentence in the Central Mississippi Satellite Facility for women in Flowood for embezzling $12,000 from her office’s civil and criminal accounts in 2012.

She pleaded guilty March 30 to stealing an additional $103,736.75 meant for restitution of crime victims from an account under her care between Jan. 1, 2013, until supervisors removed her from office May 15, 2014, after OSA investigators turned up evidence she had declared residence in Madison in 2013. She was sentenced to an additional five years on the second theft to be served with the first sentence.

And she can’t pay off her debt while sitting in prison.

The $300,000 is nowhere near $818,000, and whether the county recovers the remaining $518,251.75 in full remains to be seen. But it is a start in the right direction as the county tries to recover from a serious breach in public confidence, and Hinds County Chancellor J. Dewayne Thomas should be commended for his decision and making Western Surety do the right thing.