Shelby County Clerk Wanda Halbert says she is poised to mail a backlog of 8,666 packets of new car licenses and tags to citizens Tuesday, June 28.

But Halbert and the county administration are still at odds over what caused the backlog, and it appeared Monday that Halbert’s office will not assume control of mailing out tags and plates July 1 as had been announced at the Shelby County Commission meeting on June 6.

“I’m not sure what the holdup is,” Halbert said at the outset of Monday’s commission meeting, three weeks after the commission approved $540,000 in funding to pay the U.S. Postal Service to cover the amount for the mailing in a postage meter.

Bureaucratic traffic jam backs up new car tags and license plates

“I was hoping all of this would be ratified,” she said. “We need to know what we need to do to put them in the mail.”

At the June 6 meeting, Halbert urged the commission to reject the funding, saying she didn’t know why it was needed since vehicle owners pay $5 per renewal request to handle the cost of mailing plates and tags.

The commission approved the funding anyway.

Deputy County Chief Administrative Officer LaSonia Hall said Halbert and the administration met in the interim with new CAO Harold Collins.

Collins said they set conditions, including that the plates and tags have to go to the county mailroom within 24 hours of packaging by the clerk and there has to be a weekly visual inspection of where the clerk’s office stores the plates and tags on their way to the county’s mailroom “to ensure no ready-to-mail items are held back.”

County Commissioner Mark Billingsley said if there are further delays, he might seek a resolution asking the state of Tennessee to take control of the clerk’s office.

“I’m sick and tired of the commission and the mayor and his administration being the scapegoats,” he said, calling the clerk’s office actions so far a “gross dereliction of duty that should have been done by this clerk.”

Halbert responded by claiming there had been “illegal operations” in the office that she has dealt with since being elected clerk in 2018.

Hall said there was no evidence of such wrongdoing.

“In the more than 20 years that I have been elected, I have never felt more disrespected,” Halbert said in response to Billingsley. “I told you up front our facilities are not legal. … I don’t even have time to be an elected official because I am in the room stuffing envelopes with my staff.”