By Marcia Moore
SUNBURY — Budget cuts and the loss of three positions prompted Northumberland County Prothonotary M. Kathleen Strausser to stop processing passport applications.
“I had no choice,” Strausser said Tuesday.
She informed the Philadelphia Passport Agency that as of Friday, her office in the Sunbury courthouse will no longer accept applications. As of Monday, the office will no longer answer residents’ questions about passports.
“I no longer have the staff to provide this valuable service to the residents of Northumberland County and surrounding counties,” Strausser said, citing the county’s cutbacks.
She has been unable to fill an account clerk position vacant since last January, and recently, the salary board eliminated the second deputy and data entry clerk position.
Since processing passport applications is not a mandated service, Strausser decided to eliminate it.
The decision reduces a public service offered in the county for more than 35 years and affects the county’s general fund.
For each application processed for the U.S. Department of State, the federal agency pays the county about $25.
Last year, Strausser’s staff handled 839 applications and collected about $21,000 for the county.
Prothonotaries in neighboring counties said they would not consider eliminating the service and will continue to offer it to any resident willing to pay $75 for an adult passport and $60 for a child passport.
“It brings in revenue for the county,” said Linda Richards, prothonotary of Union County, where about $25,000 was collected from processing 1,029 passport applications last year.
In Snyder County, the prothonotary’s office handled 645 applications last year and brought in about $16,125 in revenue for the county.
“I believe it’s a matter of choice,” Snyder County Prothonotary Teresa Berger said. “We’ve offered it since at least 1972 and are happy to do it for anyone. They don’t take a lot of time.”
Although her office isn’t facing cutbacks, Berger said the service is so important to the public that she’d process the applications herself if her office was short-handed.
“It’s a great public service,” she said.
