Two Schuylkill County courthouse employees continue to be suspended without pay, accused of using sophisticated county software to inappropriately look up information on a number of people.

Commissioners contend that Tax Claim Director Angela Toomey and Assistant Director Denise McGinley-Gerchak used the county’s LexisNexis, sophisticated search software, to look up personal information on about 300 people.

Ultimately, due to the way the software works, a total of 9,146 peoples’ private information may have been compromised in database searches using the LexisNexis software.

The software accesses such data as Social Security numbers, driver’s license records, and legal and financial information. LexisNexis automatically includes information on the search subjects’ family members and neighbors, which is why the 300 searches may have compromised 9,146 people.

Commissioners suspended the women without pay on Sept. 17, 2021, contending they conducted the improper searches in violation of the county’s Network and Internet Access policy.

In a split vote on March 9, commissioners hired Experian for a total of $277,894 to notify the 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.

Commissioner Gary J. Hess was opposed, saying he felt the investigation that concluded the women had made the unauthorized searches had not been thorough enough, and that Toomey and McGinley-Gerchak had not been interviewed or given an opportunity to defend themselves.

The results of that investigation have yet to be made public.

A move to fire Toomey and McGinley-Gerchak on March 9 failed after Hess voted no, chairman Barron L. Hetherington voted in favor, and Commissioner George F. Halcovage Jr. abstained due to a “pecuniary conflict of interest.”

Toomey and Gerchak are among four who in March 2021 filed a federal sexual harassment lawsuit against Halcovage, and contend in a second suit, filed in October 2021, that they were subjected to retribution for filing the initial suit, including being demoted and suspended.

The lawsuits are still wending their way through the court system.

The Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry’s Unemployment Compensation Board in March determined the county could not prove the women engaged in “willful misconduct” and so were eligible for 26 weeks of unemployment compensation.