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Senate Human Services committee hears bill to clarify Protection and Advocacy access to financial records
Summary
Advocates told the Senate Human Services Committee that Protection and Advocacy needs explicit access to financial records to investigate suspected exploitation of people with disabilities. Banking industry witnesses urged retaining existing confidentiality limits and existing procedures set in 2019.
The Senate Human Services Committee on multiple occasions heard testimony on Senate Bill 2164, which would clarify the duty of confidentiality and disclosure for the North Dakota Protection and Advocacy Project and explicitly recognize its authority to request financial records when investigating alleged exploitation of people with disabilities.
The bill’s supporters, including Veronica Zitz, executive director of the North Dakota Protection and Advocacy Project (PNA), and PNA legal director Brad Peterson, told the committee that PNA routinely investigates reports of abuse, neglect and financial exploitation and needs access to bank records to determine whether exploitation has occurred. “We believe we have, not only have, but we're mandated to seek out or to investigate reports of abuse, neglect, and exploitation,” Peterson said in…
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