Curry County’s director of operations said he withdrew administrative and editing privileges from nearly all employees after an individual made “unauthorized changes” to the county’s website.

Ted Fitzgerald, who is also county counsel, asked the Board of Commissioners on Wednesday to approve a new policy that limits administrative privileges to one person. The new policy also requires those manning Facebook pages for individual departments to register with Human Resources so the county can vet information being posted.

Fitzgerald said he included a social media component to the policy after determining that statistics posted to the Curry County Justice Facebook page were inaccurate.

“They misrepresented actual calls by other agencies, which I feel is a disservice to other agencies,” he told commissioners, referring to an April 28 post that states that the Brookings Police Department only received seven calls for service between April 20 and April 26. “We’re not here to misrepresent other agencies. We’re going to need to work harder to make sure that whatever we put on the website is accurate and that’s why this policy is going forward — why I would recommend that it would apply to Facebook pages as well.”

Curry County commissioners unanimously approved the new policy, with the new chairman, Jay Trost, saying that the need to limit access to one administrator was necessary to protect the website’s integrity. He said he felt the need to clarify a Facebook post from Sheriff John Ward that the county had denied him access to the website.

“We were not preventing any information from being on the website,” Trost said. “We were just directing that all information that needs to go [on the] website needs to go through this one person until we can figure this out and subsequently create a policy to protect it going forward.”

In his post, Ward said his office uses the county website to keep the public apprised of the number of calls his deputies and other agencies have received and responded to.

“Apparently they did this last week through their county counsel but didn’t let anyone else know until we did some digging this morning into why we can’t post on our own web page,” Ward stated.

In a comment to that Facebook post “Curry County Government” said website administrative and editing permission was revoked when an “individual from the Sheriff’s Department” made unauthorized changes to a different department’s webpage.

On Friday, Fitzgerald told Redwood Voice Community News that the individual in question was not the sheriff, but one of his employees who had accessed the Human Resources Department’s page.

“The changes were in reference to job postings and so forth within the sheriff’s department,” Fitzgerald said. “But, nevertheless, I can’t have everybody … who knows what could happen if people were just allowed to go in and make changes to the HR website.”

On Wednesday, he told commissioners that anyone wanting to post something to the county’s website or change things will be required to go through website administrator Miranda Plagge.

The new policy prohibits employees from accessing or editing pages other departments administer unless they receive prior written authorization from the director of county operations.

The policy also states that content posted to the website and to social media pages must be “factual, nonpartisan and regularly reviewed for accuracy.”

The social media and website administrative policy also addresses comments on social media, stating that remarks and articles are not allowed if they’re not related to the topic being commented on. It also prohibits comments supporting or opposing political campaigns or ballot measures, profanity, rude, disparaging or discourteous comments directed at specific individuals and comments that promote discrimination. Solicitations of commerce are also prohibited on county-managed Facebook pages. Violating the new policy could lead to disciplinary action for an employee including job termination.

On Friday, Fitzgerald said there was no threat to the general public’s information, especially since payments for building and planning services and other services aren’t currently available via the website.

The director of county operations said Wednesday that while some county representatives want to be “out in an expanded presence with social media,” that desire can also potentially threaten the county’s “IT infrastructure.”

This website and social media policy comes about two years after a ransomware attack crippled Curry County’s servers, Trost pointed out.