Loretta Adams was surprised to learn that sudden fame subjects Ohioans to computer records searches at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

It doesn't work that way at the 88 county agencies, said Adams, executive director of the Ohio Job and Family Services Directors' Association.

"That would not be a legitimate use of government access. We don't use it to pull people in the public eye," Adams said. She said such checks were unheard of when she was a deputy director of the state agency in the 1990s.

She was puzzled by checks to see whether "Joe the Plumber" owed child support or unemployment compensation taxes or was receiving welfare.

State agency Director Helen Jones-Kelley OK'd the checks after Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher was caught on camera with Sen. Barack Obama suggesting he might have the money to buy a plumbing business.

"Consistent with past departmental practice," Job and Family Services checked out Wurzelbacher so it could act if he was receiving welfare or owed support, Jones-Kelley wrote. Wurzelbacher has said he is not involved in a child-support case.

The senior child-support manager who ran the check on Wurzelbacher, Vanessa Niekamp, said she was unfamiliar with the practice described by Jones-Kelley.

Adams said government workers must have probable cause -- recognizing a name from an active case or getting a tip on possible fraud -- before rummaging through confidential records that include tax and salary information.

"If some individual phoned us or tipped us we would have an obligation to check it out. Just because someone appears in a newspaper or a news story? No," Adams said.

A review of agency policies found none authorizing checks when news reports feature people who might have come into money. Spokesman Brian Harter said there is no written policy, and that Jones-Kelley has not suggested the practice to county agencies "because there is not a set policy."

Expressing concerns about privacy rights, Ohio Auditor Mary Taylor has announced that her office's audits now will examine policies governing the storage, use and distribution of personal information.

Officials with Job and Family Services departments in Franklin, Cuyahoga and Licking counties agree with Adams.

"No. You do not basically check people out simply because of what you have read in the newspaper. There has to be a business reason for that search," said Licking County Director John Fisher, the president of the state association.

Rick Werner, director of the Cuyahoga County Department of Job and Family Services in Cleveland, said he, too, is unaware of any situation where his agency looked into anybody in the news.

The checks authorized by Jones-Kelley, a Democratic appointee who donated $2,500 to the Obama campaign this year, raised Republican suspicions that the checks were politically motivated.

At 3 p.m. the day after GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain dubbed Wurzelbacher "Joe the Plumber" during an Oct. 15 TV debate with Democrat Obama, Wurzelbacher came under scrutiny at the state agency.

Jones-Kelley has denied any political skulduggery and said any information found on Wurzelbacher is confidential and has not been shared.

Critical Republican lawmakers have asked the state agency to identify who else it has checked because they were "in the public spotlight."

Inspector General Thomas P. Charles is investigating the searches on Wurzelbacher.

rludlow@dispatch.com