Chances are that the last time you went to the ballot box, you may have been voting for a few county officers without really knowing what their function was. The average Centre County resident probably can’t rattle off the job description for “prothonotary” or “clerk of orphans’ court,” for example. The functions of other county officers—such as coroner, district attorney and sheriff—may seem obvious, but in reality, there is more going on behind the scenes than most people realize.
Known as “row officers,” these elected officers, as well as those of treasurer, controller, recorder of deeds, register of wills and jury commissioner, were established by the Pennsylvania state constitution many years ago.
“A few of these offices have existed since Pennsylvania became a colony, but the positions were not necessarily elected. Some were appointed,” explains Tom Baldino, co-author of the upcoming Penn State Press book Pennsylvania Government and Politics. “By the time of the Constitution of 1874, the document listed these offices as functions of county governments and made them elected positions. Thereafter, when the ballots were printed to elect all of these offices, they appeared in a row; hence, they came to be called ‘row offices.’”
Locally, these positions have been established since Centre County was officially founded in 1800. The current row officers serve four-year terms and are based in either the Centre County Courthouse or the Willowbank Building. While their functions vary widely, they each play a vital role in keeping the county safe and prosperous.
CONTROLLER
Jason Moser
Jason Moser boils the controller’s job description down to this: “We basically supervise all of the fiscal operations for the county.”
This involves responsibilities like maintaining the general ledger for the county, handling the payroll for county employees, and serving as internal auditors for the county government. The controller is a permanent member of the county’s salary board and sits on the prison board as well.
Along with the treasurer and the county commissioners, Moser also sits on the county retirement board and administers the employee retirement plan.
The controller generally handles most of the county’s payables, while the treasurer deals more with receivables, but the two offices work together to review each other’s work to make sure records, checks and invoices are accurate.
Moser, who was just re-elected for his second term, says the support his office provides to all Centre County officials has a wide-reaching effect.
“We’re not really a public-facing office, but we are the service provider for all the other departments and offices of the county,” he explains. “When they have a question about whether they can do something with county funds, they come to us and we can help them, which then allows those departments to go out and provide services to the residents of Centre County. I think that’s an important function that we provide.”
CORONER
Scott Sayers
Most people probably understand that the coroner’s office is responsible for investigating deaths. But Scott Sayers says most people can’t begin to fathom the extent of what he does.
“Everyone associates us with car accidents, homicides and suicides, but we are involved in way more deaths than that,” he says.
In fact, the coroner must investigate and sign the death certificate for every death that does not fall under the category of “natural” death, including all deaths that occur at home or in prison.
An investigation could involve overseeing an autopsy, which is performed by a pathologist, and/or reviewing all related medical documents.
One thing that people might find surprising is the fact that no one can be cremated without authorization by the coroner—and furthermore, that authorization has to come from the coroner in the county in which the death occurred.
Sayers’ staff includes one full-time chief deputy coroner, a deputy office assistant and five very part-time deputies. With over 800 deaths to cover in 2023 alone, the small staff leads to one of the most challenging aspects of his job, he says, as it keeps him on call almost constantly.
“Death knows no weekends or holidays,” he says. “At any given moment, any time of day or night, I can get a call and have to go right out.”
Still, it’s rewarding work, even after 26 years on the job, Sayers says.
“I was brought up around the funeral business, so death is just another day at the office for me. But I’m there to help people get through their toughest time in life, to explain things to them and to show them what the next steps are.”
DISTRICT ATTORNEY
Bernie Cantorna
Whenever a major criminal case hits the local news outlets, the district attorney is often in the spotlight, making him one of the more publicly visible row officers.
“Fundamentally, at some level our office is responsible for and oversees every criminal prosecution in the county. … People see the charges that end up being filed in court, they see the dispositions and sentences and they see how that affects the community. That’s obvious. But there is so much more that goes on behind the scenes regarding those prosecutions and from an administrative standpoint,” says Bernie Cantorna.
People might be surprised to see just how many people—including nine attorneys, one county detective and 10 administrative staff members—are involved in every aspect of a criminal case, from filing through charging to trying and sentencing, he says.
As DA, he says, “You’re really in a role of always mentoring your staff and your lawyers so they can get better and do a good job for the county. That’s really an important role that I have, to improve how we function so we can do a good job for the citizens.”
Since Cantorna took office in 2018, deaths from drug overdoses have declined, as have the number of criminal case filings, although he says they have been gradually ticking back up post-pandemic. Still, Cantorna says, “We really live in one of the healthier counties in the commonwealth, especially when it comes to crime rates and overdose rates.”
JURY COMMISSIONERS
Hope Miller and Shelley Thompson
The state constitution calls for every county to have two elected jury commissioners, each from a different political party. While Pennsylvania has since made some changes to allow counties to make the position non-elected, Centre County has kept it as two elected officials. Together, the jury commissioners are in charge of maintaining a functional system for jury selection.
“As elected officials, we swear an oath that we will preserve the impartiality and randomness of selecting jurors,” says Hope Miller, who has served in the position for 14 years.
While Miller says jury selection in Centre County’s early years might have involved arbitrarily choosing passersby outside of the courthouse, today a sophisticated program randomly pulls names from a database of 180,000 Centre County residents. A big part of the jury commissioners’ job is ensuring that the list remains as up to date and accurate as possible.
At the beginning of each year, the program selects 15,000 names from the database, and those are the names that are used to fulfill judges’ orders for jury selection for the rest of the year.
Jurors are summoned via postcards that direct them to fill out an online questionnaire. With each jury selection, about one-third of the postcards are returned due to no forwarding address—a relatively high number, but not unexpected in a college town.
The jury pool is further whittled down by eliminating respondents with qualified excuses—which Miller defines as “circumstances that make it ‘impossible’ for you to attend. Not ‘inconvenient.’”
Those can be factors like age (people over 75 can automatically be excused upon request), work conflicts, prepaid vacations, health problems and hearing disabilities—although Miller points out that the court will accommodate people with any kind of disabilities if they wish to serve.
Miller says she and her fellow jury commissioner, Shelley Thompson, strive to be fair and compassionate about requests to be excused from jury duty.
“Everybody has something going on in their life, and we respect that and accept that,” she says.
PROTHONOTARY & CLERK OF COURTS
Jeremy Breon
Jeremy Breon likes to say his office is “essentially a giant filing cabinet for the courts.”
Breon is starting his second term as prothonotary and clerk of courts, although he worked in the prothonotary’s office for eight years prior to running for office. While in some counties his position is broken up into two separate offices, in this case he serves a dual role. As prothonotary, he records and files the legal documents for approximately 10,000 civil cases each year, encompassing such things as divorce proceedings, custody cases and other civil actions. On the clerk of courts side, he does the same for approximately 1,200 criminal case filings for the Court of Common Pleas.
In addition, Breon’s office—which includes a staff of twelve as of 2024—serves as the county’s passport acceptance agency and organizes one naturalization ceremony each spring.
One of his most important jobs is to stay on top of current methods of digitizing and storing records, although he says, “I highly value all of the paper. There’s something very important about the original record.”
Besides holding current criminal records for the most recent five years, his office stores most of the court’s original docket books as well as naturalization records dating back to 1800. They even have the original petitions filed for the Women’s Temperance Movement of the late 1800s, all bound in cloth.
“It’s amazing the amount of Centre County history that we have right here in this office,” Breon says, emphasizing that the public is invited to come in and review records at any time.
RECORDER OF DEEDS
Joe Davidson
Joe Davidson explains, “The primary function of our office is to record, preserve, protect and reproduce legal documents that deal with real estate in Centre County.”
Of course that includes things like leases and deeds, but Davidson says, “We have over 100 different types of documents that we have to categorize with specific requirements.” On top of that, he says, “Every single document we record is unique. You’re never going to get two documents that are exactly the same.”
Davidson says this presents a challenge in teaching his staff of four to determine what is recordable.
“You can’t teach the difference between every kind of document, but you can teach the difference between the concepts behind each document,” he says.
One thing his office does not do is interpret these documents.
“We can record a deed that says Mickey Mouse is going to sell Beaver Stadium to Donald Duck. As long as that deed is signed, dated, notarized, an original document and presented with the correct fees, we are bound and obligated to record that,” he says. “Our job is to get it on record so somebody else can look it up, and they can hopefully determine what that document is trying to do.”
Besides recording real estate documents, the recorder of deeds also serves as the collection agent for the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue for Centre County’s realty transfer tax.
Davidson has held this office since 1999 and recognizes the importance of the office.
“Our office really affects everybody and everything we do in Centre County. You can’t be anywhere in the county unless you’re on someone’s ground. We’ve got every square inch of Centre County covered.”
REGISTER OF WILLS / CLERK OF THE ORPHANS’ COURT
Christine Millinder
Much like prothonotary and clerk of courts, register of wills and clerk of orphans’ court is a dual office. Some counties divide the duties differently.
On the register of wills side, the office probates wills, and, in the case of people who die without leaving a will, grants authority to individuals to handle the estate.
On the clerk of the orphans’ court side, the office grants marriage licenses and files all court records related to guardianships, adoptions, terminations of parental rights and any estate litigation.
The office also collects the inheritance tax for the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue.
“We see people at the happiest times of their lives—when they’re getting married—and we see people at the saddest times of their lives, and times in between,” Christine Millinder says. Yet, “People don’t know much about us until their minister or funeral home has them contact us.”
Millinder started out as a marriage license clerk and worked in the office for 28 years before running for her first term. She just finished her eighth year on the job.
“I learned the office by working here. There’s no school to learn what we do. My predecessors taught me, as I am teaching my staff,” she says.
SHERIFF
Bryan Sampsel
The sheriff’s office has the largest staff of any of the row offices, employing 23 full-time deputies, 10 part-time security deputies and four support staff. Sheriff Bryan Sampsel says those numbers are set to grow over the next year as a humane officer is added to his staff and as some government offices move to the former Centre Crest building, requiring more security guards.
The office covers such a wide variety of services, it is understandable that it requires so many employees. A few of the functions of the office include:
-Serving warrants (approximately 500 to 600 each year)
-Providing security at the State College Regional Airport, Centre County courthouse, Willowbank Building, Temple Court Annex and soon the former Centre Crest building
-Transporting prisoners/defendants from the jail to the courthouse (approximately 2,500 each year)
-Issuing pistol permits (approximately 4,000 each year)
-Conducting sheriff sales of real estate and personal property
-Disposing of drugs collected via medication drop boxes (approximately 250 to 300 pounds each year)
-Assisting outside law enforcement agencies during major incidents and for big events, including Arts Festival and Penn State football games
-Conducting traffic stops and serving on the DUI Task Force
-Patrolling Snow Shoe Rails to Trails
As the county’s head law enforcement agent, Sampsel oversees all of this. He also teaches Active Shooter Response trainings in the community and does a lot of community outreach, including presenting at local Eagle Scout and Girl Scout Gold Award ceremonies.
“I generally work 30 to 40 weekends a year; I don’t take much vacation. I enjoy being here,” he says. “I have a front row seat to the best show on earth. Every day is different than the last. I love it.”
TREASURER
Colleen Kennedy
Colleen Kennedy says the most common question she gets while campaigning is, “What’s the difference between you and the controller?”
The answer is simple, she says.
“My office largely does ‘money in,’ and his largely does ‘money out,’” she says. “We do work closely together, but we have very different roles and responsibilities.”
Both officers sit on the county finance committee, which meets monthly to talk about budget concerns, interest earnings and investments, and on the retirement committee, which makes investment decisions regarding the county employees’ pension plan.
Kennedy and her staff of two handle seven different accounts for the county, and she says a typical day involves looking for unusual activity in those accounts and monitoring cash-on-hand.
The treasurer also administers the hotel tax program for the county.
While all of this accounting and finance-related work is to be expected, Kennedy says people are often surprised by the other things the treasurer’s office handles—namely, lots of licensing, from bingo licenses to small games of chance licenses to dog licenses to hunting and fishing licenses, and even pistol permits for hunters.
Kennedy worked in corporate accounting before being elected treasurer in 2019.
“This is the best accounting job I’ve had. I’d much rather be doing accounting for my community than counting beans for a company. It’s just a lot more fulfilling,” she says. T&G
Karen Walker is a freelance writer in State College.
