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Richmond City Auditor Umesh Dalal said Wednesday he has reviewed allegations made by a city official about his staff’s handling of taxpayer data and found them to be without merit.

Instead, he attributed the issue to a misreading of his office’s decision to use a late property tax bill received by one of his office’s employees to investigate why residents don’t always get their tax bills on time.

“So we traced that case and the facts of that case through the process,” Dalal said, adding that his staff was disturbed by the claim that it had acted inappropriately.

During a budget hearing Monday, Finance Director John Wack said he had “reason to believe (the auditor’s) staff has inappropriately used taxpayer specific information,” when pressed by council members for an explanation of why his office was not cooperating with a review of the city’s tax collection efforts.

Wack and administration officials have since declined to elaborate, but they met Tuesday privately and both sides said they had largely resolved their disagreement surrounding the contested audit.

Dalal said that during the meeting, Wack also provided two emails to back up the accusation of misused data.