The state Office of the Attorney General will not file criminal charges against Schuylkill County Tax Claim Director Angela Toomey and Assistant Director Denise McGinley-Gerchak, who are accused by county commissioners of making unauthorized searches of people using sophisticated county-owned software.

“No charges have been filed,” Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s press office said in an emailed response Wednesday.

“This matter has been closed and the district attorney notified,” they said.

District Attorney Michael A. O’Pake on Thursday said that he could not comment on the matter because once the case was handed over to the Office of the Attorney General, it was no longer his.

The determination was made March 31, according to the press office.

The county sent a report on the searches to O’Pake in late November. He sent the complaint on the Attorney General’s office.

The report, which has never been made public, was the result of a monthslong investigation that began in November 2021.

County Administrator Gary R. Bender said Thursday he had not seen the determination.

Efforts to reach Halcovage and his lawyer, Gerard J. Geiger, were unsuccessful.

Attorney Catherine W. Smith, who is representing Toomey and Gerchak in their March 16, 2021, federal lawsuit against Commissioner George F. Halcovage Jr., said that “At this (time), I have nothing that I can share.”

Toomey and Gerchak are among four women who filed the suit, accusing Halcovage of sexually harassing them from the time he was first elected to office in 2012. The suit is wending its way through U.S. District Court, Scranton.

Commissioners on Nov. 4, 2021, hired Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott LLC, Harrisburg, to investigate “various data protection statutes and the improper use of third party information search software” allegedly conducted by county employees.

The investigation was to see whether the women’s alleged searches using LexisNexis, an expensive software program, exposed personal information on about 300 people.

The software accesses such sensitive information as Social Security numbers, driver’s license records, and legal and financial data. It also shows information on the search subjects’ family members and neighbors, which is why the 300 searches the women allegedly performed may have compromised 9,146 people.

At that same meeting, commissioners had also planned to fire Toomey and McGinley-Gerchak, but Commissioner Gary J. Hess asked to table the terminations until the investigation was completed.

The report was completed in March. On March 9, a vote to fire the women failed when Commissioners’ Chairman Barron L. Hetherington voted yes, Hess voted no, and Halcovage abstained due to a conflict of interest.

In a related move at that meeting, commissioners voted 2-1, with Hess dissenting, to authorize spending up to $277,894 to Experian to notify 9,146 people whose information may have been compromised in the searches, provide them with one to two years’ of credit monitoring, and set up a call center.