EPHRATA - New Hope Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Services is taking down its Facebook page.

The move comes after county commissioners informed the agency about the county's policy barring departments and offices from maintaining pages on the social networking service, Commissioner Cindy Carter said.

"That Facebook account wasn't supposed to be up and running. We asked it to be removed two weeks ago, and then we found out it was still up today," she said. "We aren't allowed to have Facebook accounts."

Carter pointed to concerns about public records and comments on the page as potential issues. The county needs to be able to produce records for people requesting them, and if the county can't produce them the person requesting the records could file a lawsuit.

"If someone requests something that was posted on the Facebook page on Sept. 1 our public records officer has to figure out what was on New Hope's Facebook page on Sept. 1 and produce a record," she said.

The county might be liable if someone posts libelous or threatening comments on the page as well, she said.

"We just told everybody about the policy. We've had meetings on this. We were just very surprised when we found out," Carter said. "We've never allowed Facebook. We don't allow our employees to view Facebook at work, and that is not a practice we encourage."

The commissioners are considering developing a policy to allow departments to use Facebook, but they need to consider how it would be implemented, Carter said.

"We have to do training. They have to monitor that site and we can't have the public comment on our site," she said. "We can have websites informing people about New Hope, just not through Facebook."