Last month, it became clear that Gov. Paul LePage’s office had not followed state law in issuing at least seven executive orders, including one to launch a review of the Maine Human Rights Commission after it refused to heed a request from LePage to reopen a case involving Moody’s Diner.
State law requires that the orders be filed with the Legislative Council and the Law and Legislative Reference Library and posted online within one week of being issued. That did not happen with seven orders in what the governor’s office called an “oversight.”
The governor’s office rescinded four of the orders on Oct. 14. LePage reissued those four the same day.
Rescinding these orders is the right and necessary thing to do. So, why is the governor’s office not following the required procedure with all the executive orders, dating back to 2013, that it didn’t file with the council or library? The governor’s office maintains that there is “no issue” with them. But since the governor’s office didn’t follow the law, there is an issue.
The fix is clear: the governor’s office must rescind all the orders it didn’t handle according to state law. It can reissue any or all of those orders. What it can’t do is fix only a few and leave the rest in legal limbo.
LePage hints at the problem in the order he issued that rescinds four of the invalid orders: “WHEREAS, every person in the State of Maine has a right to know the substance of the executive orders that are issued,” the recension order says, adding that the four orders “were issued earlier this year with limited publicity.”
Every person does have a right to know what orders the governor is issuing. That’s why state law requires public dissemination of this information, which the governor’s office failed to do.
Regarding executive orders, state law says: “a copy of every executive order must be filed with the Legislative Council and the Law and Legislative Reference Library, and the executive order must be posted in a conspicuous location on the state’s publicly accessible website, within one week after the governor has issued that order.”
But the governor’s office sent no orders in 2014 or 2015 to the council or library when it first issued them, according to both the executive director of the Legislature and the library director. The governor’s office also failed to send two executive orders in 2013 to the library or council.
The library received copies of orders when staff there asked the governor’s office about them. But that does not meet the requirements of the law.
The governor’s office rescinded the four orders it could rescind with the fewest complications. In addition to the Human Rights Commission review panel, the reissued orders rescind a 2011 order calling for cooperation and communication with the state’s tribes, rescind previous orders regarding chemical use and create a State Emergency Response Team.
The other three of the seven 2015 orders the administration acknowledges it did not properly post include a February order creating a civil service review panel to “modernize employment practices.” The governor’s office exempted this panel’s proceedings from the state’s open records laws. The governor’s office didn’t withdraw another February order saying that state employees can be fired for accessing pornography using state resources or a March order that adds a representative of the governor’s office to the Governor’s Select Committee on Judicial Appointments.
It will be more complicated to rescind orders that created review panels that are already meeting or that resulted in rule changes. However, the validity of this work is now uncertain because it happened under invalid executive orders.
Public notification isn’t selective. It is required with every executive order.
