Columbus Mayor Andy Ginther claimed stolen data from the city’s database was encrypted or corrupted and likely unusable to any criminals, along with his Deputy Chief of Staff Jennifer Fening stating, “There is no evidence of ratepayers, or the general public were exposed.” And when asked by a local television reporter if he lied earlier this week about the extent of his knowledge of the information that had been leaked, and he gave a resounding "No" when it was noticed that his nose grew about four inches.

Friday, Mayor Ginther released the following statement: “To protect the community from the recent cyber attack on the city’s IT infrastructure, the City of Columbus is providing notification and offering free Experian credit monitoring to all residents and impacted individuals. Anyone who has shared their personal information with the city or municipal court may be impacted and can sign up for two years of free Experian monitoring, which includes $1 million of protection against fraud and identity theft.”  

“To sign up and view the notification letters, go to www.columbus.gov/cyber or call 1-833-918-5161 with the code B129833 by November 29th. Service begins upon enrollment.”

Why can’t Ginther for once in his life be honest with the public? Just once?

Instead, Ginther indirectly admits that he was untruthful about citizens private information not being exposed, but he has yet to inform citizens to what extent. What about city income tax records? Traffic tickets? Applications for virtually anything that the city handles? Job applications? You name it. And in typical Ginther fashion, he falsely attempts to con the public into believing that this credit monitoring is free. Providing monitoring protection with taxpayer money is hardly free.  It would be more appropriate if Ginther pays for this by first emptying his campaign war chest before using taxpayer money. This protection is going to cost the taxpayer millions along with the millions the city is now going to have to spend to fix this preventable and irresponsible catastrophe. That’s millions of dollars that should have been utilized on much needed infrastructure, homelessness, pedestrian safety, affordable housing, crime prevention, and other more important social and public needs.

While you’re at Andy, end the brainless policy of requiring a driver’s license to enter City Hall. A driver’s license is not required for admittance into the statehouse or our courthouse buildings. Keeping one license information in the city’s database is foolish. You have been using that information for yours and city halls personal use anyways.