ELECTION 2023: Henrico Circuit Court Clerk – Heidi Barshinger (Republican) vs. Gray Montrose (Democrat)
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Among the numerous positions up for election on Nov. 7 in Henrico County is the clerk of the Henrico Circuit Court, which matches incumbent Republican Heidi Barshinger against Democratic challenger Gray Montrose. The winner will serve a unique eight-year term (twice as long as all other elected positions in Henrico County).
According to the Henrico County circuit court clerk’s information page, the clerk has more than 800 responsibilities. The clerk manages estate deeds, issues marriage licenses and fictitious names for businesses and serves as the court administrator for all civil and criminal court cases.
“We’re the arm that assists the court,” Barshinger said. “So it’s really a wide variety of things that we do.”
During Barshinger’s first term, she focused on the workflow and processes of the court.
“I invited attorneys and real estate title examiners and we just talked to customers to say, what do you like about the office? What can we do to improve,” Barshinger said. “And the input I received, I made a list of things that we wanted to enhance. So we started really with some basics.”
Before her first term, county land records were available only up until 1989, Barshinger said. Since the majority of the records in the office weren’t available online, Barshinger started to work on making records and forms accessible everywhere, not just at the clerk’s office.
“We did things like marriage licenses, we scanned them in to make them available online,” Barshinger said.”We went back and took the board of supervisors meeting minutes going back and we scanned all of those in, and the same with county and state highway plots. In the last eight years, we have done over 200 years for the land records and made them available online back to 1781.”
The court has made e-voucher forms for civil case filings and appeals for the court of appeals available electronically, Barshinger said.
“We've made those applications available online to make accessibility to the office easier,” Barshinger said. “We’ve implemented things that we did not have years ago that have benefited the general public.”
If elected for another term, Bashinger said she hopes to continue to put as much information from the clerk’s office online as possible.
“My goal is to continue to make things accessible online and more online applications so we can save people trips,” Barshinger said. “And they don't have to come to the courthouse because we give them resources they need online, I think that's a great benefit.”
According to the Virginia Public Access Project, Barshinger raised more than $8,000 during her 2023 campaign for clerk of Henrico Circuit Court, and roughly $4,000 of that was financed by Barshinger herself.
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Barshinger’s opponent, political newcomer Montrose, has raised almost $9,000, and her top donors have given upwards of $1,000 to her campaign according to VPAP.
Montrose said she wants to make the office streamlined and have court processes occur faster.
“Right now, a lot of the paperwork is just that – paperwork,” she said. “And it's very hard to sort of track the processes, when you're seeing two or three or four different kinds of handwriting on forms.”
Montrose said that most of the processes that happen in other courts, along with most of their forms and processing, happen online.
“Bringing the courthouse out from the 18th century into the 21st century is what I really want to do,” Montrose said.
Montrose believes the work her opponent is doing is important but not enough.
“They’re still operating in this bubble of the courthouse as a place people go to do paperwork from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.,” Montrose said. “We don’t think about how we’re serving the community.”
Montrose said the amount of paper correspondence leads to errors, as handwriting isn’t always legible. Her proposed changes also would free up staff time, she said, since employees wouldn’t need to waste time passing documents around the office and instead could receive everything online.
Her main goal if elected to become the county clerk is to hold herself accountable and responsible for serving the community and have a significant impact on citizens, she said.
Montrose said that citizens of the county have come to her with issues they have with the efficiency of the court system.
“I was talking to some law enforcement officers the other night and they’re like, ‘Gray, one of the things that make us the craziest is continuances,’ which is when the court says we can reschedule for a later date,” Montrose said.
During a court appearance, all the witnesses, attorneys and police officers are present. If needed, the attorneys can ask the judge for more time to properly represent the defendant or plaintiff. This upsets law enforcement officers because they’ve had to travel to the courthouse for a court case to be postponed, which means officers are off patrol for no reason, Montrose said.
“We need to make an adjustment so that we’re using everybody’s time wisely,” Montrose said. “We can coordinate with the commonwealth attorney’s office and make it possible for people to apply for continuances earlier and use our remote appearances technology to allow law enforcement to appear remotely from their precinct.”
Another area Montrose wants to address is staffing for civil trials.
“Right now, Henrico County Circuit Court does not staff civil trials,” Montrose said, because the previous clerk did not staff them. “If you're staffing all your trials, you're not going to need to go back and look at those transcripts. You're not going back to figure out what the judge did, you’re sitting right there just like they do in criminal trials.”
LEARN MORE
Heidi Barshinger's campaign website
Gray Montrose's campaign website
Kristen Vithoulkas’s campaign website
Virginia Department of Elections – Citizen Portal
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