Click here for the latest coronavirus news, which the BDN has made free for the public. You can support our critical reporting on the coronavirus by purchasing a digital subscription or donating directly to the newsroom.
Gov. Janet Mills said Thursday that remote briefings administration officials held for lawmakers on the coronavirus didn’t violate the state’s open meetings law — even though most were open to the entire Legislature, no public notice was given and the public had no way of participating.
Maine Labor Commissioner Laura Fortman and Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Nirav Shah held four remote meetings each between March 20 and April 10 that were open to the full Legislature after lawmakers adjourned last month due to the coronavirus pandemic.
[Our COVID-19 tracker contains the most recent information on Maine cases by county]
Maine law requires that public bodies provide the public advance notice of their meetings, keep records of those meetings and allow members of the public to attend — things that neither the Legislature nor the Mills administration did in this situation.
In addition, Corrections Commissioner Randall Liberty held separate remote meetings with Republican and Democratic members of the Legislature. The governor has also held conference calls with individual party caucuses since the Legislature adjourned early last month due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to Mills spokesperson Lindsay Crete.
Crete said last week that the administration was temporarily halting the meetings until it could figure out how to answer lawmakers’ questions during the pandemic in a transparent way. But Mills said Thursday that the meetings were not a violation of Maine’s open meetings law at all.
“The open meetings laws do not prohibit caucus meetings or briefings, such as we’ve conducted,” Mills said, adding that her office is trying to get information out to as wide an audience as possible.
Before it adjourned last month, the Maine Legislature passed an emergency bill outlining how public bodies could conduct business while adhering to social distancing requirements meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
The emergency law allows public bodies to hold meetings through remote access as long as they provide proper notice and allow for the public to participate remotely.
The Legislature allowed itself to hold in-person meetings of its full chambers and individual committees while prohibiting members of the public from attending in person. But the provision didn’t exempt the Legislature from the public notice requirement or the requirement that members of the public be allowed to participate in some capacity. It allowed the Legislature to limit public attendance at those sessions to remote means such as video and audio.
Sigmund Schutz, a partner at the law firm Preti Flaherty in Portland and a specialist in Maine’s open government laws, said last week that the emergency law “at most eliminates the ability to attend in person,” but “doesn’t interfere with the public’s right to access.”
Lawmakers frequently hold party caucus meetings in which only Republican or Democratic members participate without providing public notice. But the Maine attorney general’s office hasn’t formally weighed in on the legality of those meetings.
A 2010 letter from then-Assistant Attorney General Linda Pistner — now Mills’ deputy legal counsel — noted that state law does not touch on caucuses and that the attorney general’s office did not have an opinion on the issue. However, Pistner wrote that the office “could defend a decision to close a caucus” to the public.
A request for comment from Attorney General Aaron Frey’s office was not immediately returned.
Watch: Maine CDC, Gov. Janet Mills press conference, April 23
[bdnvideo id=”2967807″]