On Oct. 15, I was one of dozens of people who filled the room at a public hearing of the Government Oversight Committee in Augusta to hear further proceedings on Gov. Paul LePage’s actions in connection to Good Will-Hinckley rescinding its employment offer to Mark Eves only days after negotiating with Eves to become its president. We were there to witness the committee’s review, hear further testimony and listen to public input on the proceedings. Some of us were there to testify.
When the public hearing was announced, I debated with myself whether I should prepare anything. I began a series of inquiries with legislators I knew and respected, with others whom I had seen frequently in Augusta last winter and spring as I participated in environmental, farming and transportation policy issues, and with local acquaintances with whom I frequently address state policy matters.
I was struck, frankly, by the widespread unawareness, misunderstanding and widely divergent views on the most basic provisions underpinning assessment of executive performance in such circumstances as we now face in Maine.
First, I read carefully the remarkably strong report and analysis prepared by the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability, or OPEGA, at the direction of the Government Oversight Committee to determine the facts, despite serious constraints imposed by the governor’s office. Staff were given wide access to protagonists, some documents from the LePage administration, but the governor and his staff declined to speak with OPEGA, citing pending litigation against the governor.
Second, I reviewed additional observations from a collection of documents addressing a more expansive set of concerns respecting the governor’s performance in office.
Third, I undertook a careful examination of the Maine Constitution concerning impeachment and, given the document was written nearly two centuries ago, I informed myself of the meanings of the relevant terms as they were used at that time.
My findings were surprising, and they didn’t conform to what I was hearing from legislators with whom I talked. It altered significantly what I ultimately brought before the committee.
I found that impeachment is mentioned six times in the Maine Constitution. The most fundamental is Article IX, Section 5: “Every person holding any civil office under this State, may be removed by impeachment, for misdemeanor in office; . . .” Note that it doesn’t say “a crime” or “a conviction.” The use of the single word “misdemeanor” led me to Johnson’s 1797 Dictionary of the English Language in which a misdemeanor is defined as “offense; ill behavior; something less than an atrocious crime.”
Maine has a fundamental problem. We have in office a governor who uses his power and authority vindictively, to intimidate and counter to the votes of the people, who withholds his department heads from legislative testimony, who has arguably broken or failed to comply with laws, who misuses and abuses his veto authority, who has failed to meet his responsibility to fill boards and commissions with members, and who spends the public money without adequate safeguards to assure quality product.
Each of these is an “offense” or “ill behavior”; altogether, they are simply intolerable.
The Legislature is the only body that can protect the state from further damage. It can enact several different forms of supermajority legislation to “bell the cat.” Or it can find in LePage’s performance the requisite basis for a “misdemeanor” judgment and remove him from office.
My comments before the Government Oversight Committee spoke to several different dimensions of that circumstance. It was gratifying that the OPEGA director’s committee-requested summary of the day’s proceedings included the comments I had just presented near the close of the public testimony among the five she advanced to the committee as worthy of further consideration.
Hendrik Gideonse of Brooklin is a former selectman, retired educator and policy analyst.