New interim county recorder appointed

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

The new interim Van Wert County Recorder has plenty of experience as a county employee, and not just in the recorder’s office.

Unsurprisingly, Kim Hughes is the most senior member of the recorder’s office staff, with 11 years as a deputy recorder under former recorders Nancy Harting and Jan McIntosh. She also has another five years of experience as a deputy clerk in the County Clerk of Courts’ Title Department, where she helped customers obtain titles for vehicles and mobile homes.

Hughes, a 1980 graduate of Lincolnview High School, was approved Monday morning by the Board of County Commissioners as the interim recorder, replacing McIntosh, who retired Friday after seven years as recorder and more than 30 years in the recorder’s office.

Hughes still needs to be confirmed as recorder by the Van Wert County Republican Central Committee, which is expected to take place by mid-August. If Republicans do the expected and choose Hughes as the new county recorder, she would then be expected to run for re-election in 2012 when McIntosh’s current four-year term expires.

Hughes said Monday she is excited to be named interim recorder and hopes to be confirmed as McIntosh’s replacement by the Republican Central Committee.

“I consider it an honor and a privilege to be the recorder of Van Wert County,” Hughes noted. “My predecessors, Nancy Harting and Jan McIntosh, have given me all the skills, I believe, that I need, and I’m looking forward to it.”

Hughes said she first took a position as deputy recorder in 2000 after a part-time stint in the Clerk of Courts’ Title Department that began in 1995.

“I wanted part-time; that’s what I was looking for at the time,” Hughes said, adding that she later wanted to work full-time and Harting, who was then recorder, had a full-time position available.

Although she admitted that there would be challenges ahead for the Recorder’s Office, she feels her staff is up to it.

“We’re very much down-staffed, but we have a good team,” Hughes noted of the Recorder’s Office’s staff, which includes a full-time deputy recorder, Kerry Tuttle, who has four years of experience in the Recorder’s Office — but also more than a decade in the Clerk of Courts Office — and two part-time staff members.

Hughes said the small staff might mean she will have to do more personally, but she said that’s not a problem.

“I’m willing to work very hard to get the job done,” she said.