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Three weeks ago, a small team of auditors arrived from Denver and Palo Alto to begin examining the county’s juvenile court system, an audit requested by the system’s only juvenile judge, Betty Adams Green, because of recent changes in staff allocation and the way dockets were managed. The auditors were fairly thorough in their initial examination. They interviewed key employees of the district attorney’s office, the public defender’s office and Judge Green’s office, as well as lawyers who routinely work at the juvenile court, located across Woodland Street from the Coliseum.
The one office that wasn’t included was the juvenile clerk’s office. The clerk’s office is a vital component of the juvenile system, employing 35 people, processing about 68,000 docket entries and doling out more than $7 million in child support payments each year. Three employees of Matrix Consulting Group, subcontracted especially to audit the juvenile clerk’s office, were sent home several days after arriving in Nashville. The official word from Metro’s internal audit office, which is a division of the Finance Department, was that Vic Lineweaver, the juvenile court clerk, had refused auditors’ access to his employees and files. (The audit was a “performance audit,” which checks for efficiencies and effectiveness and assesses compliance with rules and regulations.)
County administrators have been planning the audit since at least last December, when a draft of the bid announcement was sent to Metro officials, including Lineweaver. A high-ranking member of his staff, Matt Drury, even sat on the committee that chose the eventual contractor for the job.
Judge Green, for one, is confused about why the clerk’s side of the audit wasn’t completed. “The whole point was not a gotcha or to get anyone in trouble,” she says.
Lineweaver is a colorful former Metro Council member who has been the juvenile clerk since 2002. He’s known as a perpetual campaigner, routinely calling on a group of attorneys—known informally as Lawyers for Lineweaver—for campaign money, even though the race to reelect him isn’t until next May. Earlier this week, he arrived at the Scene offices with an American flag on his lapel and a blue tie covered with bright yellow smiley faces, winking and sticking out their tongues. More than once he repeated that “something smells” in relation to an audit of his office, which he claims he never refused.
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The way Lineweaver sees it, his office was aware of the audit as far back as last February. But he thought it had less to do with the juvenile clerk’s office than it did with court administration. He thought the clerk’s office would be looked at “peripherally,” which wouldn’t demand much of his staff’s time or attention. When he finally realized—in late September, he says—how in-depth his office would be examined, he felt blindsided. “We were left out in the dark,” Lineweaver says. “It’s not fair to me and my staff or the betterment of our children and our taxpayers.”
Drury, Lineweaver’s second in command, sent the auditors information Lineweaver wanted them to cover, including salaries and number of clerk employees. But Lineweaver never received assurances that those would be considered. “If these things could be included,” Lineweaver says, “everyone wins.”
Lineweaver, however, has been accused of stonewalling the audit for political reasons. The report probably would be released after the first of the year, just in time for his opponents to capitalize on it. And some attorneys are speculating an audit will pinpoint a number of problems within the juvenile clerk’s office. In three separate cases within the past two years, a state appellate court has singled out Lineweaver’s office for failing to include important documents in files and for other sloppy record keeping. “The record in this case is abysmal,” justices wrote in one of the cases, a child custody dispute. “This court has addressed these deficiencies before, and it is most unfortunate that we must do so again and in a case of such importance to the parties and the children whose lives hang in the balance.”
If the appellate omissions were an anomaly, a performance audit probably would clear Lineweaver of culpability. Fortunately, earlier this week, Lineweaver reached an agreement with Metro officials to move forward with an audit. He said the internal auditors’ office finally relented to his demands about what he wants included. But more than likely, Lineweaver realized how his reluctance would look in the public domain. A politician knows when to compromise in order to fight another day.