Lewis County officials are looking into the possibility of creating a dedicated public disclosure officer position to handle requests made to the commissioners office and the departments they are in charge of.
At the heart of a discussion during a meeting yesterday morning was the increasing workload that technology and large public records requests are pushing onto county staff.
Commissioners Edna Fund, Gary Stamper and Bobby Jackson met with county staff, including Human Resources Director Archie Smith and Budget Analyst Becky Butler, at the meeting.
While the prosecutor’s and sheriff’s offices have a public records employee, the rest of the county does not. A public records officer for the county commissioners and their departments would offer a single point of contact for citizens making requests.
If the county were to create the position, the commissioners said it should be someone with both technical knowledge on how to retrieve information as well as someone who has a working knowledge of state and federal public disclosure laws.
Butler suggested that the county should lay out additional guidelines for the position.
“We need policy on public disclosure,” she said.
The county has over the last year been processing various public records requests for large amounts of data.
As social media becomes a more common way of facilitating communication, Smith urged the commissioners not to use it for official business since it would be subject to public records requests.
Jackson and Stamper said they both direct people seeking information concerning county business through their personal social media accounts to their official county emails.
“If I start doing business on my own personal email, I leave it open to requests,” Jackson said.
The Chronicle in past months filed a records request for Commissioner Edna Fund’s Facebook messages after it appeared she may have been using it for county business. County staff said Wednesday the report was nearly done, and that due to recent changes, searching through Facebook messages has become more difficult as the company tries to build in safeguards against hackers.
Fund also recommended that county staff be specific in who they send emails to on their official accounts, since a records request for a single message that was forwarded to many people must include all the copies of the forwarded email.
There was also discussion on where the position should be located. The risk management and internet technology departments were both floated, but no decision was made. It was also undecided on where the funding would come from for the position or how to go about the hiring process, but Smith suggested the county try to rehire Karri Muir.
Muir was the commissioners clerk before she resigned last fall and accepting a position in DuPont after she claimed former commissioner Bill Schulte created a hostile work environment, a claim that an investigation by the county’s insurance pool could not confirm.
The report was released last month.
The quality of Muir’s work would make her a good candidate, Smith said.
If approved, the position could be advertised and filled within three to four months.
