Analyst Says He Was Fired for Exposing Office Errors

A self-described whistle-blower charged Friday that he was fired from his county job as a computer analyst in the recorder’s office because he exposed mismanagement and negligence there.

Stanley Roach of Huntington Beach said he was fired after months of harassment that began when he uncovered extensive errors in the office’s computerized records system, errors that will cost taxpayers at least $6 million to correct, he said.

“They are trying to wreck me professionally and financially for doing what I was hired to do,” said Roach, who was transferred to the recorder’s office in 1986 from the county’s data systems department. He has worked for the county for six years.

Roach said as many as 10% of the listings on an index of property records and other legal transactions are wrong, incomplete or missing. Some birth records that were sealed by court order, he said, are accessible to the public.

County officials would not comment on Roach’s firing, other than to say he was given a 10-day notice on Wednesday as required by union contract.

The county administrative office Friday released to the Board of Supervisors and the press a report from an investigation into Roach’s original allegations.

The report said that errors of the type named by Roach “are present . . . but not to the extent that he has estimated.”

The investigation, which began after Roach complained to county supervisors last summer, found that one test of indexes for 17 years of records showed a 19% error rate. A later test on an index for one year of records showed a 3% error rate.

County Administrative Officer Larry Parrish, in a cover letter to the report, concluded that although the errors exposed the county to lawsuits, there should be no attempt to correct past errors. The risk of lawsuits is reduced because title companies don’t rely on the documents in the recorder’s office, he said. Only one claim has been filed in the last eight years; it cost the county $16,000 in settlement and litigation costs.

Also, Parrish said he had been advised by the county counsel that the county does not have a legal obligation to correct or alter the records and, in fact, may be prohibited from doing so.

To reduce future errors, the letter said, the county should hire an independent auditor to review the computer systems in the recorder’s office and recommend improvements.

Parrish’s letter said he had been told that Roach’s firing was unrelated to his allegations.

However, Roach said that until he complained to Recorder Lee A. Branch in January, 1987, about errors in the computer index, he had never been reprimanded by a supervisor.

Immediately after he voiced his concerns, Roach said, he was removed from a job of overseeing the office’s computer division and given menial tasks.

Since then, he said, five official reprimands have been placed in his personnel folder. One, he said, was for allowing an employee who had been evacuated from a building during a chemical spill to go home half an hour early.

In addition to the reprimands, Roach said, he was put on a 10-month, paid administrative leave this year while he was being investigated as a security risk.

The leave ended May 31.

Many workers in the recorder’s office declined to talk about Roach, but some said he was treated unfairly.

“He may have been wrong in the way he brought things to their attention,” one worker said, “but he wasn’t wrong about what he told them.”

Roach said he has asked the county grand jury and the district attorney’s office to investigate his original allegations and his firing.

The grand jury would not confirm that it had received Roach’s complaint. The complaint to the D.A.’s office, which Roach said he gave to a clerk Friday, could not be traced.

“It’s probably winding its way through the system,” said Assistant Dist. Atty. Wallace J. Wade.