As Gov. Paul LePage’s administration faces a lawsuit for holding a public meeting behind closed doors, LePage himself has decided to intervene in a legislator’s requests for information from a state agency and erect roadblocks that impede the flow of public information.
State Rep. Brian Hubbell is seeking an explanation for why the Maine Department of Education plans to issue $11.2 million less in state school aid this year than the Legislature budgeted for that purpose.
Although Hubbell and legislative colleagues started asking about the discrepancy months ago and although Hubbell requested an explanation in writing on May 1, the LePage administration has yet to explain itself.
However, in the course of requesting public information — including documents the Department of Education should have produced by law but hasn’t — Hubbell has twice heard directly from LePage. The governor hasn’t responded to provide information. Instead, he has claimed the Democrat from Bar Harbor — a member of the Legislature’s Education Committee, which oversees the Department of Education — isn’t following the appropriate protocol for requesting information from his administration.
If LePage were interested in transparency, accountability and careful documentation of how state agencies spend taxpayer dollars, his administration already would have explained to the public why the Department of Education has apparently withheld more than $11 million from school subsidy payments.
Clearly, though, LePage is more interested in asserting his own authority than in answering to the taxpayers who elected him.
On July 11, in response to a handful of information requests from Hubbell, LePage wrote that, as an individual legislator, the representative lacked the “authority to direct, investigate or compel information from a state agency” and asked that “inquiries of this nature be directed to my office so that our Commissioners and Agency staff are able to run their operations without excessive disruption.”
He wrote that Hubbell’s information request “does not appear to be made on behalf of” a legislative committee. He also acknowledged to Hubbell that, “like any Maine citizen, you retain the ability to make records requests under the Freedom of Access Act.”
Hubbell responded the next day by resubmitting his requests as formal requests under FOAA. The lawmakers who co-chair the Education Committee plan to submit a letter making clear the entire committee is interested in the information Hubbell is pursuing.
“I have always appreciated and valued the open and cordial working relationships that I have had with previous commissioners and their staff,” Hubbell wrote in his FOAA request to the Department of Education. “I trust you understand that I am sorry that the governor has reached this conclusion as it seems unnecessarily adversarial and therefore counterproductive.”
LePage responded three days later, on Friday, July 15.
“Based on your recent letter, it appears that you have both misunderstood and mischaracterized my response to your several written requests to the Department of Education,” he wrote.
“As head of the executive branch, I have asked that requests made by individual legislators to any executive branch department be directed to me so that they may be communicated by my office.”
“Of course, the administration will honor your request under the Freedom of Access Act and provide responsive documents,” the governor continues toward the end of the letter. “I understood your letters, however, to ask substantive questions that sought informed answers rather than simply a production of documents. If that is still your intent, I invite you to submit the questions to me as stated in my prior letter.”
By now, LePage has had nearly three months to respond to Hubbell’s first written request for information. Hubbell has copied LePage’s education policy adviser, Aaron Chadbourne, on all of his communications. Clearly, LePage has had ample opportunity to review and consider Hubbell’s requests for documents and explanations.
Yet the governor has chosen to respond by demanding that all requests for public information go through him — and not through the government agency that has the answers.
LePage’s behavior is bizarre, disturbing and overreaching. It’s not conducive to efficiency, accountability or transparency. It’s unbecoming of the top elected official in a representative government.