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Frank Has Career Of Challenges

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By MIKE SALINERO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 5, 2008

TAMPA - When Pat Frank took her seat as a freshman state senator nearly 30 years ago, she had no intention of paying the customary deference to the powerful Senate rules chairman, Dempsey Barron.

Frank was coming off a productive two years in the state House, passing bills that helped minority students and the deaf.

"She came to the Senate ready to work the same way she had in the House," said Thalia Potter, Frank's Senate aide. "Barron was not used to others not taking orders from him. She was of an independent stripe. They were in conflict."

Frank never shied away from a fight with Barron or other powerful politicos over a 40-year career in public life. That's why it was not a surprise to friends that the 78-year-old Frank sought a second four-year term as Hillsborough County Clerk of Circuit Court this year. She won last month when no one qualified to oppose her.

"I think it's fascinating," Frank said of her job. "It's always a challenge and there's always something happening. And the people are interesting."

Gained More Funding For Office

Frank heads a $67.3 million-a-year organization with 954 employees. In addition to acting as clerk to the local court system, she is comptroller for the county, overseeing a $1.8 million investment portfolio. The clerk also serves as custodian of court records, processes civil and criminal court cases, and conducts mortgage foreclosures and tax-lien sales.

During her first four years in office, Frank and her staff untangled a mess in the traffic section, where 41,000 tickets with errors had been kicked back by the state. Her office is in the midst of replacing a $10 million computer system that judges and clerks complained was slow and unwieldy.

Frank doesn't believe in letting problems simmer. She took office soon after voters approved an amendment in 2004 that shifted responsibility for funding the courts from the counties to the Legislature. Court clerks were asked to estimate their expenditures that year as a basis for their future state funding.

Frank discovered the estimate for Hillsborough was $500,000 below the actual expenditure in 2004. If nothing changed, that formula would continue to be used in the future, and the local court system would always be underfunded.

"Every operation on the court side of our office would have been negatively impacted every year," said Frank's chief deputy, Harry Cohen.

Frank wasted no time in booking a flight to Tallahassee to lobby legislators. It took a few more trips, but the formula was adjusted.

Cohen said the episode showed that Frank's knowledge of the legislative budgetary process is invaluable.

"The most interesting thing about it," Cohen said, "I don't think most clerks would have ever dreamed of going up there and trying to do something like this."

During one of those Tallahassee trips, someone asked Frank who her lobbyist was.

"I am," she replied.

Conventional Wisdom

Ask Frank where she got the confidence to challenge the male political hierarchy and she'll tell you it started during her four years in a convent. Though she's not Catholic, Frank's father wanted his teenage daughter out of Fort Lauderdale, which was overrun with sailors during World War II.

"He said, 'Get thee to a convent,'" Frank recalled.

Being in an all-girls school meant her gender was not an obstacle to Frank taking leadership roles. The nuns also instilled discipline and gave her an ethical and moral foundation that friends say is among her strongest attributes.

"She has a deep sense of integrity and commitment to public service," said Jim Holmes, a retired Presbyterian minister who has worked in most of Frank's campaigns. "I never felt her primary concern was to get elected or re-elected but to be a good, sound, honest public servant."

Frank was one of the first women admitted to the University of Florida in 1947, graduating with a degree in finance in taxation. After a short stint keeping the books for her father's orange grove business, she moved to live with an aunt in Washington.

Working during the day as an economist at the U.S. Justice Department, Frank thought she could handle law school at night. She boldly walked into the provost's office at Georgetown Law School and asked for an application.

A secretary ran to get the provost, Father Lucey, who chatted with Frank, then admitted her on the spot.

"I didn't even know they hadn't accepted a woman to that point," she said.

During her two years at Georgetown, Frank said, she was harassed by students and professors. She finally quit after hearing a remark by a real property law professor whom students called "Bull."

"I understand, gentlemen, that we have a woman in our school," the professor said. "She'll not make it through this course."

Frank married Georgetown law student Richard Harlan Frank in 1952. They moved to Tampa, where she spent the next two decades raising three daughters.

Balancing Home, Activism

Frank was one of a group of women in the late 1960s and early '70s that stormed the all-male citadel of local government and changed the face of Hillsborough County politics. Frank, Jan Platt, Sandy Freedman, Betty Castor, Helen Gordon Davis and Fran Davin balanced domestic lives as wives and mothers with community activism. They grew impatient with what they considered a poor education system and corrupt local government.

"We were all activists and community volunteers and maybe we could do a better job," said Freedman, who became Tampa's first female mayor. "I think in the '70s I used to hear more often that maybe we ought to give women a chance because men haven't done a great job."

With three daughters in school, Frank decided to run for school board in 1968. It was the year that teachers across the state walked out of classrooms to protest the lack of state funding for public education. The community was split between supporters and opponents of the teachers. Frank was a supporter.

Frank lost that election by 54 votes.

Four years later, she beat the same opponent by 5,000 votes.

The Bunny Bill

Over the years, Frank has championed the cause of underdogs, from poor migrant workers to the disabled. But her compassion wasn't limited to humans.

While in the Senate, Frank tried to pass a bill that would have prohibited the use of live rabbits to train greyhounds. Trainers maintained the practice was necessary to convince the dogs it was worth their while to chase artificial rabbits.

Frank tried to appeal to her colleagues' better instincts by giving them carrots. The bill still failed.

Overall, friends say, Frank was an effective legislator. As chair of the Senate Economic, Community and Consumer Affairs Committee, she prevented the landmark 1985 growth-management bill from being watered down by developers' lobbyists.

"She put in real teeth that could have been used," said Potter, her former aide. "In 1985, everybody recognized that it was a remarkable piece of legislation."

But the bill left much of its implementation up to local governments. When she became a Hillsborough County commissioner, Frank learned that relying on local governments to enact and enforce the rules often sapped the bill's effectiveness.

Good government was also one of Frank's passions. As a senator, she sponsored a bill that provided criminal penalties if special taxing districts don't file proper financial reports with the state. She joined the majority in killing amendments that would have excluded ports, airports and hospital districts.

After she left the Legislature in 1989, Frank served as co-chair of the Florida Sunshine Committee. The group pushed successfully for a constitutional amendment, passed by voters in 1990, that made the Legislature conform to the state Sunshine Law by holding all meetings in public.

After stints on the school board, the state House and Senate, and the County Commission, Frank said, she was ready to use her knowledge and experience in an executive position and ran for the Clerk of Court job.

And her age? She doesn't think about it all that much.

"We're all here on borrowed time," she said. "What it is you're interested in, that should be the thing that drives you."

Researcher Michael Messano contributed to this report. Reporter Mike Salinero can be reached at msalinero@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-8303.

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