Members of the Erie County Legislature's Minority Caucus are calling for a full investigation into the improper disposal of confidential Social Services documents.
A county comptroller audit discovered the highly confidential and personal records of hundreds of county residents was left out in the open at the Rath Building. Today, Republican lawmakers submitted a resolution that calls for an hearing and investigation.
Legislator Kevin Hardwick says it is a serious issue that has compromised the identity of some county residents.
"You would think that someone would ask, along the chain of custody of those records, 'Shouldn't we be shredding this stuff? Should we be putting this out to the curb where anybody can walk by?' Especially in this day and age where there is so much attention to identity theft," Hardwick says.
Republican legislator Ed Rath says Erie County already has a high rate of identity theft.
"Erie County is well above the national average when it comes to complaints for consumer identity threat. We need to protect the interests of the residents of our community and have this investigation and come to understand why this happened and absolutely guarantee that it will never happen again," Rath says.
The documents contained social security cards, passports and bank account information. The Poloncarz Administration says it has corrected the problem, but Republican lawmakers say they fear the unsecured disposal process has gone on for years.
Hardwick says he wants to know why the documents weren't shredded.
"It's apparent that the administration wasn't aware of protocols in place for shredding, otherwise they wouldn't have been taken by surprise by this," Hardwick says.
Lawmakers are calling for the Social Service Commissioner, the county attorney, and the District Attorney to appear at the hearing.
WBFO News spoke with Deputy County Executive Richard Tobe Tuesday. Tobe said the Administration learned of the problem on or about April 1, 2013. He said a county employee contacted the 16th floor of the Rath Building with the concern of open records. Tobe said that same night he went to the basement of the building and had all the totes secured and placed them in a locked storage area.
Tobe said the comptroller learned around the same time they did in early April, but took six weeks to contact the administration.
"I don't think that was proper," said Tobe. "We're not aware that any material was actually improperly disclosed. We are surveying all county departments. The totes were always in the sub-basement. We are not aware of anyone who took any materials. We never received any complaints. We are confident there have been no actual disclosures, expect that the comptroller notified me by letter on Friday that he took 1,700 documents. We are fearful that may constitute an improper disclosure and we have asked for him to return them. So far he has not."
