Bartholomew County officials are working to restore some of the contact information for the public on the county’s website after it was removed without any notification by Bartholomew County Auditor Pia O’Connor.
Telephone numbers and county-assigned email addresses were taken off two links available to the public through the home page of the Bartholomew County website by O’Connor after she took office in January.
O’Connor said on Friday she personally had the contact information for all county officials removed for security purposes. “It was my decision,” O’Connor said.
While phone numbers for elected officials have been restored under one link, another that lists appointed board, commission and committee members for the county contains no phone numbers or email addresses that would allow the public to reach any of the public officials.
“Much of that was their personal phone numbers,” O’Connor said. “A lot of them didn’t want it disseminated.”
The removal of the public contact information, including email addresses for elected officials in the courthouse and the county governmental office building, the Bartholomew County commissioners and Bartholomew County Council members, was not considered in any public meeting, nor authorized by any county board prior to O’Connor removing the information.
Since the decision to remove the contact information impacted other county departments, Bartholomew County Commissioner Larry Kleinhenz said it should have never been removed without consulting other county administrators.
“The commissioners did not have a meeting regarding this, nor did we initiate that the telephone numbers or email addresses be removed,” Kleinhenz said.
Kleinhenz said he believes all deleted contact information should be restored to the county website.
For more on this story, see Sunday’s Republic.
