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GOP Senators call on Schweich to audit Department of Revenue

By Eli Yokley

— More than a dozen State Senators have called on Auditor Tom Schweich to conduct an audit of the Missouri Department of Revenue after weeks of mounting criticism centering around their document scanning process.

In a letter sent Tuesday, 15 Senators, led by Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Kurt Schaefer, R-Columbia, said Schweich’s audit would assist them in effectively reviewing “tens of thousands” of pages of documents regarding the scanning process.

“The Senate Appropriations Committee intends to continue to vigorously pursue this outrageous invasion of personal privacy through the budget process,” he said. “However, the Senate does not have the ability to delve into and confirm the funding sources and total amount spent over the past few years to implement these new procedures.”

The Republican-led outrage has grown after Stoddard County resident Eric Griffin, 52, filed suit against his local fee office after they tried to scan his personal documents when he went in to file for a Conceal Carry Endorsement. After a fee office employee attempted to scan some of his documents, Griffin stopped them, and the fee office would not allow him to obtain his license.

The Senators, joined by Senate President Pro Tem Tom Dempsey and Majority Floor Leader Ron Richard, said they want to know whether the department’s new scanning procedures — which includes the use of third-party machines and cameras with the ability to scan bio-metric data — violate state statute that prevents implementation of the federal REAL ID Act of 2006.

Opponents of the department’s new procedures have not demonstrated that the documents have been sent to the federal government, Circuit Judge Robert N. Mayer said earlier this month in a ruling removing a temporary injunction that ordered the scanning of documents be stopped.

Stoddard County Prosecutor Russ Oliver said at the time that the collection itself, not the sending of documents, is the “primary focus” of his litigation.

Read the letter: Page 1, Page 2