BANGOR, Maine — On the surface, Monday’s selection of Sean Faircloth as the City Council’s new chairman and ceremonial mayor seemed a quiet affair.
No other councilors were nominated for the position, and no one raised a formal objection to the appointment. Without dissent, the decision was unanimous.
But when questioned about the process after the meeting, multiple councilors described a chaotic and secretive process conducted via one-on-one meetings, phone calls and text messages behind closed doors.
“It’s frankly one of the most confusing and least open discussions we have all year,” said Councilor Josh Plourde, who confirmed he was an early contender for the job.
Behind-the-scenes communications were so rampant that newly elected Councilor Joe Perry said Monday the only councilors he didn’t hear from in regard to the issue were outgoing Chairman Nelson Durgin, newly elected Councilor Sarah Nichols and Councilor Gibran Graham.
“After the election, a lot of positioning goes on because no one wants a divided council or a messy floor fight,” Perry said of the chairman selection.
Since the discussions did not take place in public, it is not clear how the council decided on Faircloth, but it is known that Councilor David Nealley campaigned for Councilor Ben Sprague to take the job.
Sprague held the position in 2014.
Nealley said that when he approached Councilor Joe Baldacci about supporting Sprague, Baldacci told him Faircloth already had the votes.
Baldacci, who nominated Faircloth, would not comment on the selection process after Monday’s meeting, and when Sprague was asked Monday if he was ever a contender for the job, he responded only, “I’m happy to support Sean.”
Sprague, who seconded Baldacci’s nomination of Faircloth, followed up Tuesday afternoon, saying he was willing to serve as chairman again if selected by the council, but he believes Faircloth will do a good job and fully supports him.
Meanwhile, Faircloth, who called for increased efforts to attract jobs to the area upon accepting the gavel, said he did not know whether he had the votes to take the chairman position until Monday’s decision.
Nealley alleged Baldacci was the deciding vote between Sprague and Faircloth and that the count before Monday’s decision had Durgin, Sprague, Nealley and Plourde in favor of Sprague and Graham, Faircloth, Nichols and Perry in favor of Faircloth.
An opponent of Baldacci’s proposal to raise the city’s minimum wage, Nealley noted that Sprague had not supported Baldacci on the minimum-wage issue while Faircloth had. That issue is due to come before the council again Nov. 23.
During Monday’s meeting, Nealley criticized the council’s process for selecting a chairman, saying he would like to have seen either Baldacci or Sprague — both veteran councilors — step into the leadership position, but “the fix was in” before he had a chance to express that position.
“The way we choose a chair, when it really is behind closed doors with folks who get together and pre-arrange a selection, isn’t appropriate,” he said during the meeting.
He went on to call for a change in the city charter that would require the council to discuss nominees in an open session and then select the chairman in a separate meeting.
“We didn’t really have a chance to vet the vision and listen to the ideas coming from those candidates,” Nealley said of the process this year.
Perry responded that Nealley campaigned just as much as other councilors to get certain candidates appointed chairman. It just happened that he was not successful.
“I don’t think he would have said that if his fix was in,” Perry said of Nealley after Monday’s meeting.
Even if some councilors knew the results before Monday’s selection, it remains unclear how definite that decision was.
Graham said after the decision that he knew there were at least two contenders, including Faircloth, but he wasn’t sure which one it would be.
“I knew who I was voting for and that other people’s decisions were not going to be open to me until we discussed that at the meeting,” he said.
Graham declined to identify the second contender.
While he would not comment after the meeting, Baldacci responded to Nealley’s complaint during the meeting by saying it may be time for the city to talk about having a popularly elected mayor, but the current procedure has been in place since 1932.
A Democrat, Baldacci said in 10 years he has only voted for two Democrats to serve as chairman: himself and former Councilor Patricia Blanchette. Monday marked Baldacci’s 11th vote on council chairman and third vote for a Democrat.
According to Sprague, there is more interest in the council chairman this year because cities including Bangor are assuming greater leadership responsibilities because of ineffective and partisan politics in Washington, D.C., and Augusta.
“It is only natural that people are looking to cities more and more for a leadership role, and it is only natural that the role of a council chair, which I think historically has been more of a symbolic position in Bangor, attracts more attention,” he said.
Meanwhile, Nichols said she was contacted after the Nov. 3 election by both Faircloth and Plourde, but she told Plourde she already had decided to support Faircloth based on his support for Baldacci’s proposal to raise the local minimum wage.
Perry, a former state lawmaker, said he also decided early on to support Faircloth based on their work together in the Legislature.
“I’m not sure there’s ever been a more effective legislator than Sean,” he said.
Theoretically, the state’s Freedom of Access Law bars the council from deliberating or making decisions outside an open meeting that the public can attend.
However, Mal Leary, vice president of the Maine Freedom of Information Coalition and president of the National Freedom of Information Coalition, said private discussions about the next council chairman exist in a legal loophole, because the open-meetings clause is only triggered when three or more public officials gather to conduct business.
That means one-on-one discussions between councilors do not require that the public be given an opportunity to attend.
However, any emails or text messages sent regarding city business should be subject to public inspection, Leary said. The Bangor Daily News has filed multiple freedom of information requests seeking those records.
It remains unclear whether there is sufficient appetite among councilors to reconsider how the chairman is selected. Only Graham, Nealley and Nichols said they felt it was worth looking into.
Meanwhile, Sprague said he is open to talking about it, and Plourde said that may be an initiative that the new chairman could take up.
Faircloth took no position, saying he was “agnostic on the whole thing,” and Durgin and Perry said they thought Nealley’s proposal would make no difference.
“Personally, I think it’s smart for anyone who wants to be nominated to have a pretty good idea when going in whether they have the votes,” Perry said.
The council chairman is recognized as the official head of the city for ceremonial purposes and has all the powers and duties granted to mayors for the purposes of military law.
He or she also acts as mayor when mayoral representation is required on regional or state boards or commissions, according to the city’s charter. The chairman is often called upon to testify on local issues before the state Legislature.
Unofficially, the chairman has historically been expected to serve as a consensus builder and leader, helping the council to avoid gridlock in contentious issues and setting direction.
For the extra time, the chairman is paid an extra $500, raising his or her annual compensation to $2,500.
Follow Evan Belanger on Twitter at @evanbelanger.