Issue 02 | January 2023
Notice and Response After Partial SSN Release
The second SSN story is the response: voters learned after the fact, the office tried to contain the release, and the official notice voters received was signed by Whitney Stevens, Public Records Officer, not by the elected Auditor.
The notice to affected voters was dated January 17, 2023, weeks after the December 20 release. It said the requester deleted the data from their inbox and trash folders, and that the office confirmed no widespread dissemination, retention, or copying by the requester.
But the accountability signal was hard to miss: the letter was signed by Whitney Stevens, Public Records Officer, for the Pierce County Auditor's Office. The elected Auditor's name was not on the voter notice telling people their protected information had been released.
Farmer did later issue a public statement apologizing and saying people were understandably upset. She also noted that members of her own family were among the 463,110 voters who received notices.
The statement acknowledged the delay between the release and the voter notice. Farmer said the office wanted to understand the size and scope of the situation and had to find a vendor capable of handling such a large mailing during holiday staffing shortages.
AP reported that Pierce County said it would require information to be reviewed by a second employee before release. Farmer's statement also said protocols were added to hide personally identifiable information and require a second staff member to double-check public-records responses.
The fair, sourced takeaway: the office moved to contain the release and says the requester cooperated. But when hundreds of thousands of voters were told to monitor accounts, insurance transactions, and credit reports, the formal notice came from staff, not from the person elected to run the office.
In plain leadership terms, this reads less like 'The Buck Stops Here' and more like 'the buck stops there.' Putting an assistant or staff member as the public face of the notice may be administratively convenient, but it is not the strongest signal of ownership after a breach affecting hundreds of thousands of voters.