$973,500 for county records work questioned

Luzerne County has paid a Wayne, Pa., company $973,500 since 2005 to organize county records, prompting two county officials to question what was done for that money and how the payments were approved.

County Controller Walter Griffith said he has refused to pay a $5,200 payment request from the company – LRW Solutions Group – because he is investigating.

Commissioners hired LRW in June 2005 for up to $107,000 to study records storage and preservation needs in several county offices. Commissioners then voted in September 2006 to continue the company’s work at the same fee of $1,050 per day plus expenses.

The 2006 extension did not set a new cap or outline what work would be completed, Griffith said.

“We are getting no reports from this company about what they are doing. The scope of their work is so vague, nobody knows exactly what they’re supposed to do,” Griffith said.

County Prothonotary Carolee Medico Olenginski also is questioning the expense, saying the county did not need an outside consultant to figure out how to manage and store records.

“You just need an index. Anyone who uses a library could organize these records,” Medico Olenginski said.

After visiting the Thomas C. Thomas building Monday afternoon, Medico Olenginski said she does not see an organization system worth $973,500. She questioned the logic of building shelving and cages in a building that is not climate-controlled.

The county spends about $103,100 annually leasing the building, according to the budget/finance office.

Commissioners sought proposals this summer from building owners interested in leasing the county space in downtown Wilkes-Barre to store records, but there were no responses. The county has reissued the proposal, with responses due on Jan. 21.

LRW representative Eric Coombs said that many of the payments covered document shredding, salaries of interns and workers to move files, and construction of caged rooms to secure files within the county’s rented storage space at the Thomas building on Union Street in Wilkes-Barre.

Coombs said his company also prepared records plans for numerous offices on which records must be kept by law and which may be destroyed. He said the county has no staff archivist, so departments increasingly relied on his company for direction.

Most, if not all, of the payments came out of a special record improvement fund built on deed recording fees. State law established the fund in 1998 and states the treasurer, sheriff, register of wills, prothonotary and clerk of courts sit on the committee that decides how the money is spent.

Clerk of Courts Bob Reilly said he has been a go-between authorizing LRW work because he keeps receiving requests from department heads for assistance organizing and moving records. Nobody, including any county commissioners or committee members, has expressed a concern about LRW’s continued work for the county, he said.

Reilly is planning to call a meeting soon to see if members want to take another approach. About $7,500 remains in the fund, though it will continue to grow with deed filings.

“If the philosophy has changed and other members want to do it differently, that’s fine. For five years it was handled this way, and all of the sudden it’s a problem,” Reilly said.

County minority Commissioner Stephen A. Urban said he supports Griffiths’ refusal to pay the latest bill. He said a new public request should be advertised if departments still need help with records management.

“This company billed for work that went way beyond the scope of its contract,” Urban said.

Coombs said he is in the process of preparing a report outlining the work completed by payments to LRW to date.

Coombs said John Hyder, the uncle of county prison deputy warden Sam Hyder, assisted him in organizing the Thomas C. Thomas records until July. Coombs said he needed someone local to oversee the movement and shredding of documents so he did not have to excessively travel back and forth. Reilly recommended Hyder, Coombs said.