In an effort to give voters as much information as possible on each of the candidates running for the Republican nomination in the Harris County County Clerk race, I am providing a forum for each candidate to outline their priority issues. These answers are verbatim from the candidates. No endorsement is either intended or implied for any candidate in the series.

Candidate Kevin Mauzy outlines his three priority issues:

THREE AREAS I WILL ADDRESS AS COUNTY CLERK:

First, I will complete several projects already under way in the office.  I will complete the acquisition and implementation of a new financial accounting system for funds in the registry of the county civil and probate courts.  I will complete the acquisition and implementation of a new court case management system for the county civil and probate courts. And I will complete the implementation of a project to establish a co-location site to replicate and store records so that in the event of a natural or man-made disaster that damages or destroys those records stored in Harris County, the office can be up and running quickly serving the residents of Harris County.

Second, I will initiate several new projects.  I will convert approximately 75,000 existing microfilm records to optical image to make records more accessible while protecting personal information such as driver's license numbers and Social Security numbers.  I will work with the county's Management Services Department to develop an automated agenda process for the Commissioners Court.  Concurrent with that project, I will initiate a document management system to optically scan and retrieve archived Commissioners Court records to make them readily available to the public and reduce storage of paper records, and that makes Commissioners Court records available to county departments on a county intranet site, thus eliminating the thousands of pages copied and provided to county departments following each meeting of Commissioners Court.  And I will update the office's Disaster Recovery Plan in conjunction with the implementation of the co-location project outlined above.

Third, is the area of elections.  I will continue our Voter Outreach program and examine ways to expand and improve it.  I will look for ways to improve the election judge and clerk training the office provides prior to elections.  And while I believe the county's eSlate election equipment has served the voters of Harris County well, we could easily be facing the acquisition of a new election system in the next few years as a result of changing election laws and advances in technology.  In that event, I will aggressively pursue that task to acquire the best election system for Harris County.

ABOUT KEVIN MAUZY:

I am a native Houstonian, and a graduate of the University of Houston with a degree in Political Science.  I have been employed in the County Clerk's office for 29 years, seving in capacities such as Director of Public Information & Public Service, Clerk of Commissioners Court, Administrator of Courts & Human Resources, and, for the past 7 1/2 years, as Chief Deputy.  I have been a key member of Beverly Kaufman's management team during her entire tenure as County Clerk and have overseen the day-to-day operation of the office.  That makes me uniquely qualified to assume the position of County Clerk, as no other candidate has the experience and knowledge of the office that I possess.  I am a longtime  Republican; a member of the National Association of County Recorders, Election Officials, and Clerks (NACRC); co-chair of the Clerk to Board Committee of NACRC; County Judge's appointee to the Harris County Grievance Committee, and a member of the Harris County Justice Management Committee.  I am a member of First Methodist Church of Houston, a life member of the University of Houston Alumni Association, member of the Arlington Heights Civic Club, and past Vice-President of the South Houston Band Booster Club.  My wife Olga and I have two grown children and one grandchild. Visit my website at www.MauzyforClerk.com.