by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
A lot of people naturally root against Steve Johnroe.
It’s nothing personal. They just wish that, one day, no one would need his particular expertise.
Last month, Johnroe became the assistant to Clerk of Courts Jim Fuller in the juvenile and domestic violence divisions. There is no shortage of work.
The frustration that Johnroe and his three dozen staffers must feel comes of knowing there’s undoubtedly no end to the cycle. The reward comes from finding the occasional flickering light in all that gloom.
“It can get depressing with juveniles, especially those with dependencies,” said Johnroe from his office in the Duval County Courthouse. “Those problems are so much deeper seated than delinquency.
“Usually, delinquent kids might get in trouble two or three times. Then he matures, and he goes down the right road. A lot of these dependency cases, there’s so much mental health, substance abuse that is generational.
“There’s nobody to care for these kids. The foster care system certainly isn’t equipped to take care of them. So you’ve got a lot of kids making chronic bad moves their whole lives.”
Johnroe first went to work for the State as a foster care worker in 1989 before becoming a probation officer. He then was a program specialist for two and a half years with the Department of Juvenile Justice.
For the past four years, Johnroe was in court administration, working as the juvenile alternative sanctions coordinator. He recruited and maintained community service work sites that judges could use as alternatives to incarceration for juveniles.
“I did that until the Legislature eliminated the position at the end of June,” he said.
When his job disappeared, Johnroe’s future was uncertain. But only briefly.
“The lady who was the human resources manager for the 4th [Judicial] Circuit left,” he said. “She left one day; I started the next. I did that for several weeks, even though human resources isn’t my background, and it really isn’t my interest. But it was a good stopgap.”
Gordon Morgan, chief assistant to Fuller, had worked with Johnroe for eight or nine years and asked if he would be interested in a clerk’s job.
“Gordon told me there were some retirements coming up and thought I might be interested,” he said. “I told him I was. I like work processes, organizational challenges, and that’s what this type of work really presents.”
Johnroe’s primary office is in the courthouse. He also sees most domestic violence clients on the seventh floor of the City Hall Annex and visits the department’s office at the beaches about once a week.
He is responsible for making sure files and records are available when they’re needed for court and balancing out the workload among the staff.
“I also try to make sure everything’s up and running in the beaches office,” he said. “They’ve had computer problems the last couple of days, and we need to take care of that. I need to make sure all the agencies are talking to one another, and we’re actually getting done what’s supposed to be done.”
Johnroe attends meetings and conferences with the agencies that handle domestic violence, “networking with them, making sure we’re working on the same page. Sometimes you can get a little adversarial relationship going. There’s usually no reason for it. Everybody ought to be fighting for the same goal.
“I think that’s one of my strengths, as a conciliator. I get people together and see if we can put together something that’s workable for everybody, something that’ll make us all look good instead of just one of us looking good at the expense of someone else.”
The promise of a good job brought Johnroe here in 1988 after receiving his master’s degree in telecommunications from Michigan State.
“My brother-in-law was an AT&T manager, and he was going to get me a job with the company,” he said. “It was right when they broke up the phone company. A lot of middle managers lost their jobs. He got laid off.”
To pay the bills, he got a job selling automobiles.
“Not to demean the car industry, but it was a tough job,” he said. “Six days a week, 11- to 12-hour days. I was looking for anything that was Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. That’s how I started with the State in foster care.
“I kind of liked the work once I got into it. So I just progressively kept my eyes peeled for more responsible positions.”
Johnroe has earned another master’s degree since moving here, this one in public administration at the University of North Florida.
He intends to learn as much as he can about the clerk’s office and, perhaps, work as an assistant in another division.
“But I’m pretty happy right here,” he said. “I could stay with a job like this because there are so many challenges. Every day, a whole new stack of papers comes in, and you want to make sure it gets in the files for the judges. You want to make sure the attorneys have what they need to do their job.
“It’s an organizational challenge, and I’d like to see it run as well as humanly possible.”