The Audit the Vote group, which has attended the county commissioners meetings for the past several months, has overwhelmed the county offices with Right-to-Know requests that could cost taxpayers an additional $25,000 this year.

At their salary board meetings Monday, the commissioners approved an item on the agenda to hire a temporary employee to handle the multiple Right-to-Know (RTK) requests being sent to the commissioners.

Leslie Osche, commissioners chairwoman, said Tuesday that the employee would be paid up to $25,000 in 2022 for work retrieving information for RTK requests, poring through emails requested to redact information that is not available to the public, visiting multiple county departments to search for documents and information, determining whether a RTK request can legally be granted or denied, and working with the county solicitor on RTK requests.

The county's RTK officer also is the assistant to Osche and Commissioner Kim Geyer. That officer has spent the majority of her time working on the voluminous RTK requests received since the Audit the Vote group began attending the commissioners meetings about six months ago to demand a “forensic audit” of the 2020 election, Osche said.

“She is basically not doing anything to support Kim and I because her time is completely spent on Right-to-Know requests,” Osche said.

She said the temporary employee will have a legal background, but the commissioners have not yet decided whether they will hire a paralegal or use an outside law firm.

Osche said the Audit the Vote group continues to accuse the commissioners of not taking action on the 2020 election, which it contends included fraud on various levels.

Osche said she reminded the group that all three commissioners agreed to and announced a procedural review of the election, and an audit that was included in the recommendations by the county election commission.

While those efforts are ongoing, the commissioners do not make announcements at each meeting attended by the Audit the Vote group regarding their status.

“They don't see what is going on behind the scenes, so their opinion is nothing is happening,” Osche said.

Osche said she does not know exactly how many RTK requests have been received by the county in recent months, but said her office received 13 just last week.

Geyer said the commissioners are working on the 2020 election review and audit at the same time as the RTK requests.

“Trying to do the two at the same time is interfering with one another to the point that we have a backlog of Right-to-Know requests,” Geyer said.

She said the commissioners also work on many and varied county issues each day, and the constant stream of RTK requests by the Audit the Vote group is stressing the system.

“I wanted them to be aware that their excessive amount of requests are burdening our current system to the point where we are going to have to hire another person to help us fulfill these multiple requests,” Geyer said.

She said the flood of RTK requests is burdening the election bureau, information technology department, and now the taxpayers.

Geyer said some requests cannot be filled because the information requested is from a verbal conversation.

“If the document doesn't exist, we do not create those documents,” she said. “We say that's a denial, based on the fact that the document does not exist.”

She said conducting county business is sometimes difficult for those in the public to understand.

“We are working on a solution and trying to be transparent and respond according to the laws, but often people are not asking the right questions,” Geyer said. “They want things, but they're not public documents.”

Geyer advised the Audit the Vote group to turn their attention to the state government, where Gov. Tom Wolf has named Leigh Chapman the new acting secretary of state.

Geyer said Chapman was affiliated with the group Deliver My Vote, which she said has a mission of eliminating in-person voting at the precinct.

“That kind of flies in the face of how our traditional election law and election code was formulated and it flies in the face of our constitution,” Geyer said.

She said she assured the Audit the Vote group that the county has measures in place to determine whether the 2020 election was free and fair.

“They need to focus their attention on Harrisburg,” Geyer said.