More care will be taken with records

Hernando county will put public documents in secure bins before they are destroyed.

By BARBARA BEHRENDT, Times Staff Writer
Published November 9, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [Edmund D. Fountain | Times (2006)] Clerk of the Circuit Court Karen Nicolai is implementing a new system in which paperwork set for destruction will be placed in secure bins not accessible to the public.

BROOKSVILLE - As the official record keeper of Hernando County, Clerk of the Circuit Court Karen Nicolai disposes of boxes and boxes of outdated public documents every month.

Ranging from payment records to old reports, the piles of discarded materials have been dumped in recycling bins near the Hernando County Government Center for years.

This week, a citizen visiting the recycling area noticed the documents and the personal nature of some of the information included in the trash and complained.

Nicolai now has changed her process for discarding the old public records. She said the documents the person found have been carted off and she is implementing a new system in which paperwork set for destruction will be placed in secure bins not accessible to the public.

"I guess I didn't realize how easy those bins were to access," she said. "We've been doing it that way for years."

The concern, she said, is that information collected by the county that could be personal should be protected, especially with the increasing instances across the country of identity theft.

Not all documents set for destruction will be shredded. Shredding costs money and Nicolai said that the new procedure for handling the paperwork should make additional shredding unnecessary.

The documents set for destruction have met all of the legal criteria that allows for their destruction, such as the number of years they have been on file. Other county departments store their records in the clerk's storage area and allow the clerk's staff to get rid of them when the time comes.

For documents generated in other departments that do not land in Nicolai's crowded storage area, different departments follow a variety of procedures.

Human Resource Director Barbara Dupre said that any materials received in her office that have identifying information such as Social Security numbers are shredded before they are discarded.

In the utilities department, some records are sent to a company for shredding and others are placed in bins within the department. They are then collected by a county employee and taken directly to the landfill for recycling, according to Sandra Kirby, billing supervisor.

She said people do need to be careful with their personal information because there is so much identity theft taking place especially with so much more business being conducted online these days.

"Really, nobody's information is safe," she said.

Barbara Behrendt can be reached at behrendt@sptimes.com or 352 848-1434.

[Last modified November 8, 2007, 22:08:36]