EAST MILLINOCKET, Maine — Maine’s Public Access Ombudsman is reviewing complaints from residents alleging that the Board of Selectmen violated the state’s Freedom of Access Act by taking several straw votes outside selectmen’s meetings, officials said Thursday.
“I have been contacted by several individuals and asked to look at the situation,” ombudsman Brenda Kielty of the Office of the Attorney General said. The ombudsman position was created by the Legislature in 2012 to review complaints about compliance with the Freedom of Access Act and to mediate their resolution.
The complaints came from a group of residents, including Jennifer Murray and Selectman Clint Linscott. Murray said she believes that Selectwoman Kelley Michaud, Selectman James Jamo and board Chairman Gary MacLeod have individually had conversations with the town administrative assistant via telephone over the last several weeks on matters that state law requires to be discussed at public meetings, she said.
An audio recording of the Aug. 26 selectmen’s meeting Murray posted to YouTube.com includes Michaud saying, “We do this every day. Every day, we get phone calls from our administrative assistant, every day, on some things and she asks for three of us… she is looking for three of us every day.”
Maine law governing meetings says deliberations and actions by elected officials should be done openly with notice given to the public. The law also allows executive sessions to discuss sensitive matters privately under certain circumstances, but requires definitive action to be taken in public.
“Hopefully, this stuff will stop and things will start running again according to the law,” said Murray, who has residences in town and in Millinocket.
The town’s attorney, Dean Beaupain, said Kielty asked him to review the situation and so far he has found no FOAA violations. He said that what Murray refers to as straw votes is likely interim Administrative Assistant Angela Cote and her predecessor, retired assistant Shirley Tapley, requesting direction on administrative matters.
He called Murray’s complaint “remarkably vague” and said that the issues Murray raises in her complaint were discussed extensively in public sessions.
“I think that when the AG’s office looks into it they will find that there were many occasions where the administrative assistant needed direction,” Beaupain said Thursday. “There is a world of difference between that” and a Freedom of Access Act violation, he said.
Murray said she believes the alleged illegal straw votes occurred with the decisions to rewrite Cote’s job description, the posting of the job and the vote to hire Cote. With Linscott abstaining, the board came out of executive session and voted 4-0 during a regular meeting on Aug. 26 to pay Cote, a town office utility clerk, an additional $750 per month to handle the administrative assistant’s duties.
Murray said she went to the AG’s office out of frustration that her complaints at selectmen’s meetings regarding what she believed was secret action by the board had achieved little traction.
“What happens in East Millinocket always seems to stay in East Millinocket,” Murray said Thursday. “It seems to always be the Teflon town. They can break rules, bend rules to suit themselves, give half the information to get the ruling that they want, and nothing ever sticks.”
Cote declined to comment on the Aug. 26 meeting or alleged straw votes and Tapley has an unlisted telephone number. Michaud did not immediately return messages left Thursday.
Murray and Michaud have argued regularly at selectmen’s meetings since the Opal Myrick Elementary School teacher was elected last November and Gary MacLeod replaced Linscott as board chairman.
Michaud is a strong proponent of the school system and Murray, a former school board member, has been critical of town schools.