NATCHEZ — For the last four years, Adams County Coroner James Lee has been trying to get a full-time deputy clerk.

Lee said the board of supervisors voted in 2002 to grant the office a part-time clerk, to see how it would work. But part-time is not enough, Lee said.

“Every month we get behind on something, and it stresses me to have to keep up with the paperwork a full-time clerk could be doing,” Lee said. “I work through the night and sometimes I have to be in the office in the morning. I’ve worked for two days straight before.”

Board of Supervisors President Darryl Grennell said it’s a money matter.

“The board informed him that the budget was tight,” Grennell said. “We would have to take it from another department that has money it won’t be using.”

The coroner’s office has been through four deputy coroner clerks since the board granted the part-time position, Lee said. He said it was hard to keep someone at only 20 hours if they get offered a full-time position elsewhere.

Times have changed since 2002, Lee said, and his office easily generates enough work to employee somebody full-time.

“These forms we fill out are required by the state and have to be done correctly,” Lee said. “The work has picked up tremendously, and it has always been enough for a full-time clerk.”

Current clerk Ericka Johnson said a background in the respiratory therapy field prepared her for working in stressful situations, but the amount of paperwork at the coroner’s office is new, including death certificates that have to be turned into the funeral home within three days.

Lee said 2009 was the first time he went directly before the board to request the position.

“It is very difficult, and stressful, for me to be the coroner and clerk at the same time, because my job requires me to be in the field 98 percent of the time,” he said. “What my deputy clerk can’t do, I do.”

Grennell said Lee’s requested budget changes never made it to the board before Lee came before the supervisors personally, but said his proposals could have gone through the county administer and been rejected.

Currently, the total number of autopsy and toxicology reports yet to be filed is a frightening site, Lee said.

“And sitting right by (the clerk’s) desk, on the floor, is a stack of six months worth of files that must be caught up on the computer,” he said. “It frustrates me, because I know these should be filed and not stacked up on the floor, but we don’t have the time.”

And Lee argues hiring a clerk is in the best interest of the taxpayers who fund his office, because such a hire would allow maximum efficiency.

Grennell said county officials are looking into transferring money from the circuit court, where judges are working on a program that would save money that had been appropriated to hiring public defenders.

If the program didn’t work out, Grennell said the situation would have to be addressed during the next budget deliberation period.