BANGOR, Maine — City leaders say they think that the ordinance blocking expansion of a local methadone clinic might be tweaked to survive judicial scrutiny.
U.S. District Judge John Woodcock issued a preliminary ruling Tuesday in favor of Penobscot County Treatment Center, which filed suit in August alleging that the ordinance violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by discriminating against drug addicts. The complaint sought to overturn the ordinance, which critics said sought to prevent the center’s planned expansion from 300 to 500 patients. Woodcock described the ordinance as “facially discriminatory.”
Yet City Council Chairman Joe Baldacci, an attorney, said he found something else in Woodcock’s 31-page preliminary ruling — a way out.
“The language that the court used clearly indicated that the ordinance could be amended, and I think [the court] gave us some guidance in their decision, in terms of what kind of ordinance would be allowable and which kind would not be,” Baldacci said Thursday.
But Baldacci stopped short of saying that he will seek a rewrite of the ordinance when the council meets next. Councilors plan to discuss the case with the city’s attorney in executive session prior to their meeting on Nov. 28, Baldacci said.
“I don’t think the council will have a discussion of the decision until we have the attorneys present. I think it is really for them to provide [advice] for us. I always listen to my lawyer’s advice. It’s a professional courtesy,” added Baldacci, who has practiced law for 25 years.
Councilor Gibran Graham, who voted with Councilor Sarah Nichols against the proposed ordinance when it passed by a 7-2 margin on Aug. 8, said he would also wait to recommend a course of action.
“This is one of those items I will need to defer to the city attorneys at this time,” Graham said. “For now, the record shows how I voted on the matter.”
Nichols did not immediately respond to emails and social media messages on Thursday.
Woodcock found the ordinance discriminatory but did not grant an injunction to the center that would have allowed the expansion to continue, which Baldacci felt signaled a city victory.
Woodcock found that there are at least 60 open slots at the city’s other two methadone treatment clinics, so patients would not be denied treatment and would not suffer the irreparable harm the law required.
Woodcock’s discrimination ruling, which came in response to Penobscot Metro’s motion for a preliminary injunction, was based on the ordinance targeting only methadone. Under the ordinance, clinics could dispense Suboxone, another equally legal type of opioid medication, without being in violation, he wrote.
Penobscot Metro’s attorney, John Doyle of Portland, said he hoped to meet with the city’s attorneys in the next few days to press them to settle the case by allowing the expansion to proceed.
“We are still very much looking for a court order saying we can go from 300 to 500,” Doyle said. “We asked in our complaint for a declaration that the ordinance is discriminatory and we pretty much got that. All that’s happened with Judge Woodcock’s ruling is that he has said that we haven’t shown irreparable harm at the moment.”
The 60 slots were open in mid-summer. As of Wednesday, Doyle said, Bangor Metro reported a waitlist of 202 people seeking treatment. Prospective patients said they had tried that day with two other Bangor facilities and been told that they would be placed on lengthy waitlists.
The waitlist counts could not be immediately verified on Thursday.
The city has argued that Bangor has three methadone treatment centers licensed to serve a total of 1,500 patients, more than any other state municipality and as many as three southern Maine communities combined.
Baldacci reiterated the city position on Thursday, and said that the cluster of treatment centers placed an unfair burden on Bangor, especially since only about 20 percent of the patients live in Bangor.
“We are not making any value judgements about methadone. This wasn’t about the type of treatment. This has to do with the distribution of clients and whether this was going to be a burden on the city and produce public safety issues,” Baldacci said.
Both sides are scheduled to complete the evidence discovery process in federal court on Feb. 7, with a full trial possibly following in April. Doyle said he hopes that the expansion could continue without both sides facing the burden of a trial.
“We’re not taking off the table potentially going back to the judge, but our first avenue would be to discuss this with the city,” Doyle said.