LIBERTY, Maine — A selectman may be recalled by residents after a petition asserting lack of confidence in her ability to fulfill the position garnered enough signatures to have the town put the matter to a secret ballot vote.
Third Selectman Pamela Chase has nearly two years to go on her three-year term, but residents will vote on her recall on Tuesday, June 9. They will discuss the petition at a special town meeting set for 9 a.m. Saturday at the Liberty town office.
After a special town meeting this January, residents of the small Waldo County town enacted an ordinance that would make it possible to recall a town official for “very general” reasons, according to Selectman Steve Chapin. Residents intentionally chose a more liberal policy over a stricter one, he said.
“The state has a recall ordinance of its own,” he said this week. “You practically have to be accused of a crime or convicted of a crime [to be recalled]. It’s a pretty high bar.”
Chase said this week that the recall effort was based on “misinformation,” but the town official who circulated the petition said that Chase should have recused herself from decisions pertaining to a lawsuit that is pending against the town. In the Bolin Hill Road lawsuit, a family that lives along the gravel road is suing Liberty in an effort to get the town to maintain the road, which the town considers abandoned.
At this spring’s annual town meeting, Liberty residents voted to raise $40,000 for legal fees to fight the suit.
Road Commissioner Tammy Reynolds circulated the recall petition, which needed at least 47 signatures, or 10 percent of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election. More than 80 people signed it, according to town officials. Reynolds said she started the recall effort because Chase at first had said she would recuse herself from decisions regarding the lawsuit because she is friends with plaintiff Debra Paul. But when Chase changed her mind and did not recuse herself from a meeting with the Waldo County commissioners last November, Reynolds, a lifelong resident of the lakeside community, was concerned.
“That made me raise my eyebrows and worry about the townspeople,” Reynolds said. “Was she working for the townspeople or for the plaintiff?”
At that time, there was no mechanism to question what had happened and no recall ordinance in the town, she said.
“So we put in a recall petition ordinance in January,” Reynolds said. “I’ve taken a lot of backlash from a small group of people in town, but I feel that the town as a whole is behind me.”
Chase says that while she is friendly with Debra Paul, she has not acted against the best interests of the town. Additionally, she said she would not benefit, financially or otherwise, from the lawsuit and so there is no conflict of interest for her.
“Since I’ve become a board member, it’s been my goal to make things more transparent and open,” Chase said this week. “When it comes to the recall, there is not a vote that anyone can point to that shows I’ve taken a vote against the town.”
She said she believes the recall should fail. If it succeeds, it will set a bad precedent in Liberty, she said, adding that she hopes there might be a way to settle the disagreements by mediation rather than by recall vote.
“It’s hard enough to find people to do this job,” Chase said. “It shouldn’t be this easy to remove somebody. There should be a good reason to recall somebody. That’s the bottom line. The town will be better off if this recall fails.”
Geoff Herman of the Maine Municipal Association said that in his experience, recalls of elected officials are “relatively uncommon” in Maine. Until 10 years ago or so, it was much harder to recall school or municipal officers, including selectmen, he said. Recalling those officers required language to be adopted in the town charter, not in town ordinances. But then the Maine State Legislature relaxed the law to make it easier to initiate recalls.
“Towns vary in regard to the standards,” he said. “There are a lot of different thoughts on that. Generally, there aren’t standards for electing people. If from some people’s perspective you are totally unqualified for office, you’re still allowed to run for office.”
He said that anecdotally, most of the towns that adopt recall ordinances do so because something controversial has happened, and that he has not seen communities get carried away by recalling their elected officials.
“I don’t believe we’ve seen circumstances of the recall process going viral, so to speak, with vengeance recalls and all that,” Herman said. “It’s a tool for the voters. They should obviously be in control of who their elected officers are.”