Washington County commissioners to ‘ratify’ motions in response to cyberattack
Ransom payment included in $400,000 allocation approved at emergency meeting
The Washington County commissioners are planning to “ratify” two motions Thursday that were originally passed during last week’s emergency meeting in response to the cyberattack on the county government and courthouse.
County solicitor Gary Sweat said during Tuesday’s board workshop meeting that the commissioners plan to vote again on the motions in an apparent attempt to confirm their legitimacy, but he defended the need for the impromptu and unadvertised Feb. 6 meeting due to “critical decisions” that had to be made that day.
One motion authorized up to $400,000 to be paid to two companies – including one that specializes in selling cryptocurrency – to respond to the situation and restore services after the cyberattack began on Jan. 19 and escalated Jan. 24, crippling parts of the county government and courthouse for nearly two weeks. Within that motion was a ransom payment of at least $200,000 in cryptocurrency that was sent to the hackers to unlock various systems and recover data, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation.
The other motion authorized Sweat to engage with the companies that were providing services to end the “ransomware” attack. The commissioners approved both motions 2-1, with Nick Sherman and Electra Janis voting in favor of them and Larry Maggi voting against.
Sweat said the commissioners would “ratify” the motions at Thursday’s 10 a.m. meeting and then make a joint statement about the situation and what led them to “conclude” they needed an emergency meeting.
But it’s unclear what exactly ratifying the previous motions will accomplish since the ransom has already been paid through the online transfer of cryptocurrency. DigitalMint, which is one of the companies that was contracted to help with the work, is a “cash-to-cryptocurrency provider” based in Chicago that specializes in the sale of Bitcoin, according to the description on its website.
Meanwhile, the reasons for why the public was not informed beforehand about the meeting and the motion to allocate up to $400,000 in spending of federal American Rescue Plan Act money is raising questions about the county’s adherence to the Sunshine Law, which requires notice on meeting times and agenda items. County officials contacted the Observer-Reporter about the meeting just 27 minutes before it began.
Sweat noted there are some exemptions in the law that allow for emergency meetings without notice, and said there was a “definite emergency” on Feb. 6 that necessitated the immediate vote. But what exactly caused that need is not being made public despite the Observer-Reporter filing an open records request last week asking for any emails or other correspondence between county officials on what led to the last-minute meeting being scheduled.
The county responded Friday, providing two emails from Sherman and Janis, but totally redacted two other emails from Sweat and attorney Sarah Scott, who works at Sweat Law Offices in Washington.
The first email with the subject line “Washington County Special Meeting” was sent from Scott at 12:47 p.m. Feb. 6 to Sweat, who then forwarded the email to Commissioners Nick Sherman and Electra Janis, along with Chief of Staff Daryl Price. Commissioner Larry Maggi inexplicably was excluded from the email chain. The contents of the email messages from Scott and Sweat are not known since the county redacted all of the text in the body in its response to the newspaper.
Janis responded to the group at 1:37 p.m. by writing “Thank you, Gary!!” in an apparent salutation to Sweat, and Sherman responded to the email chain at 2:08 p.m. to ask “Does Larry know about this?”
Maggi apparently was not officially informed about the 3 p.m. emergency meeting until less than an hour before it began, according to the emails. Sweat said Tuesday the exclusion of Maggi from his email was an “oversight” and that he assumed other county officials would inform him about the meeting.
The newspaper on Monday filed an appeal to the state’s Office of Open Records on the grounds that the county should not have redacted the information within the two emails from the solicitors to Sherman, Janis and Price. It could take months before that office makes a final determination on whether the emails from the solicitors should be made public.