Midcoast District Attorney Natasha Irving issued a sharp rebuke Friday over criticism levied on her by a budget committee member who is running for the state Senate.
“At last night’s Knox County budget committee, I was personally attacked by budget committee member Nichole Kalloch based on ignorance and misinformation. Kalloch criticized me for the Cushing homicide case that was handled solely by the attorney general’s office,” Irving said in a statement.
Kalloch made her comments at a Thursday evening joint meeting of the Knox County commissioners and budget committee during a review of a request by Restorative Justice Project Maine for $18,750 to expand its services to adults. Kalloch said she would not support the county providing money for the program.
“I am growing tired of reading the newspaper and seeing dismissal, dismissal, dismissal for domestic violence, weapons charges, and a body being cut up and burned, and letting the guy out of jail,” Kalloch said. “I don’t know how our district attorney sleeps at night and quite frankly I feel she is putting us all in danger.”
Kalloch’s reference to the body being cut up and burned was the 2024 killing of Kyle MacDougall, 45, in Cushing.
Mark D. Gagne, 43, was sentenced last month in the state court in Knox County for offenses related to the attempted disposal of MacDougall’s body after the victim had been shot to death. Gagne was sentenced to time served but has since been rearrested for another drug offense.
The district attorney’s office did not handle the homicide or drug cases. Homicide prosecutions are under the authority of the Maine Attorney General’s Office, which also handled the drug cases with Gagne.
Irving was not at the April 16 budget committee meeting. Her office’s budget had been reviewed by the committee and commissioners on April 9. At that meeting, Kalloch voted for the district attorney’s proposed 2026 budget of $579,850 as did all the other budget committee members and commissioners.
The district attorney said Kalloch has never reached out to her about the department’s actual case conviction rate, which Irving said is the second highest in Maine.
“She has never attended court or visited my office. Kalloch is not interested in facts, data or accurate information to inform her decisions; if she was, she would have done her homework before disparaging our office. It is disturbing that Kalloch did not ask me one single question during my budget hearing, waiting to spread lies and misinformation about my office during the Restorative Justice budget presentation, when I was not there to correct the record,” Irving said.
Irving said Kalloch should apologize and urged her to meet with her team of prosecutors in Knox County.
“They are dedicated professionals who care deeply about safety and justice, they are on call 24/7, they experience trauma routinely in the course of their work, and this is how Kalloch repays their hard work and dedication. Kalloch asked how I sleep and night, and I will answer that. I do not sleep well. The horrors my team and I have encountered wakes me up, as it does for all of us in the D.A.’s office and in law enforcement. Members of my team have been assaulted in the course of their work. We are routinely threatened, dehumanized and harassed. We come back day after day, year after year, because this work means more to us than our own safety. I don’t expect county officials to put targets on our backs,” Irving concluded.
Kathy Durgin-Leighton, the executive director of Restorative Justice Project Maine, told Kalloch at the April 16 meeting that her program does not accept domestic violence, sexual assault, or more serious cases. Instead, the program deals frequently with property crimes.
Durgin-Leighton discussed how successful restorative justice has been in Knox County with juveniles. She also said the work of the Rockland Police Department, led by Chief Tim Carroll, and with Oceanside High School’s in-house restorative justice program, the number of juvenile cases referred to court have been reduced dramatically. She said Knox County used to have the third highest number of juvenile referrals to the court system of any county in Maine but that has now dropped to 12th.
The money being requested from Knox County would start working on a restorative justice program for adults. She said the treatment court for adults with drug offenses has worked well and is a national model.
On Friday, after hearing the district attorney’s response to Kalloch’s statements, Kalloch said Irving missed the substance of what she raised.
“My concern is straightforward: I continue to see serious charges of domestic violence, assault, and weapons-related cases dismissed, while at the same time we pursue minor offenses like a 70-year-old man fishing without a license. That imbalance is worth questioning, particularly when public safety should be the priority,” Kalloch said.
Kalloch said this was her first budget session with the county, and she asked a fair question: “are we directing resources where they actually matter?” She said she was not interested in cutting money from the people actually doing the work.
“I also raised a point that went unaddressed: the downstream cost of Natasha’s decisions. When cases are dismissed or not pursued, the impacts don’t disappear, they shift to our municipalities and taxpayers in other ways. That deserves a real discussion. The people in the room seemed to understand that point. I hope we can move the conversation back to the substance, rather than sidestepping it,” Kalloch said.
Kalloch, a Rockland city councilor, was one of four people appointed March 31 to the budget committee to help it begin the budget review process that has been stalled since November.
Irving is a Democrat who is in a primary race with Barbara Cray of Westport Island. The primary is June 9 with absentee voting starting May 9.
This story appears through a media partnership with Midcoast Villager.