Government transparency advocates say the state went too far in redacting an investigator’s report on a fatal March 2025 house fire on Bailey Island, withholding details that are typically disclosed after an investigation has concluded.
Portland attorney Sigmund Schutz and New England First Amendment Coalition Executive Director Justin Silverman both criticized the redactions, saying they didn’t appear to be legally justified. After receiving pushback from Schutz, the state issued a revised version of the investigator’s report in late April with some of the original redactions lifted.
“The redactions were overly aggressive, particularly for a closed investigation,” Schutz said in an email. “That is increasingly common, with agencies erring on the side of excessive redactions rather than on the side of transparency. In this instance, large narrative sections were removed wholesale, and they obscured basic facts.”
One of the fire victim’s sons also criticized the state’s sparse communication with family members, saying the lack of information deprived them of closure.
The Maine State Fire Marshal’s Office investigated the fire, which occurred overnight on March 8-9 at a house at 9 Sea Mist Lane. Investigators found the body of 71-year-old Joseph J. Meuse Jr ., of Topsham, inside the burned residence. The Fire Marshal’s Office later classified the fire’s cause as undetermined, citing extensive damage to the home.
Meuse was a retired postal official, a father of three and grandfather of four, and a guitarist who had a passion for politics and the arts, according to his obituary.
The Harpswell Anchor filed a Freedom of Access Act request for the investigator’s report in November. The Fire Marshal’s Office responded in January, releasing a version of the report with lengthy redactions, including several fully blacked-out paragraphs.
In all, nine of the report’s 16 paragraphs were totally redacted, making it virtually impossible to follow the fire investigator’s narrative. A state paralegal defended the redactions in a written response to the Anchor, saying there was a “reasonable possibility” that releasing more information would “constitute an invasion of privacy.”
The revised version of the report contains fewer redactions, with only three paragraphs fully blacked out. Silverman said the revisions were an improvement, but he still struggled to understand how they could be legally justified.
“I don’t know what is underneath those redactions, but I can’t foresee a situation in which the privacy interests of the deceased or the family members would be implicated here, particularly of the deceased,” he said in an interview. “There’s very strong legal authority that the deceased don’t have privacy rights, so unless … the state is claiming another exemption, I just don’t see how that would apply here.”
Both versions redact Meuse’s identity and any information that could be used to identify him — even though the agency had already publicly identified him. They also redact the identity of property owners David and Florette Braun — information the investigator said he pulled from a public record available to anyone online.
The revised report provides more detail about the Fire Marshal’s Office investigation, but it still leaves questions unanswered about how the fire started and the circumstances of Meuse’s death.
Joseph Meuse’s eldest son, Michael Meuse, said in an interview that the family has been frustrated by what he described as a lack of communication and follow-up from state officials regarding his father’s death.
Michael Meuse said that despite multiple requests, the Fire Marshal’s Office never shared the investigator’s report with the family. He said they received a copy only after the Harpswell Anchor obtained the report through a public records request and provided it to them.
“They (the state) were not very supportive of us, especially given what had taken place,” Michael Meuse said. “They basically just told us, ‘You need to wait; there’s an investigation going on.’”
Fifteen months later, the family was still waiting for information about Joseph Meuse’s death, he said.
“The fire marshal wouldn’t take my phone calls. Nobody would speak to us,” Michael Meuse said. “We received nothing. … We had no closure.”
Michael Meuse said another source of frustration for the family has been the way fire officials and some local news reporting seemed to suggest that Joseph Meuse’s presence in the rental home was mysterious or unexplained.
Michael Meuse said the family knew his father was renting the Bailey Island home and had visited him there multiple times. Joseph Meuse began staying there about two weeks before the fatal fire broke out, according to his sons.
“It seems that everybody is running with the narrative that he shouldn’t have been there, and that he was like a squatter or something,” Michael Meuse said. “That isn’t true. … He knew (the homeowners) and was renting from them.”
The Fire Marshal’s Office did not respond to a request for comment on expert assessments of the report’s redactions, or whether it followed procedure for sharing information with the victim’s family.
Schutz and Silverman said the Bailey Island fire report reflects a broader problem with public agencies withholding too much information, often by citing privacy concerns that don’t justify the scope of the redactions.
The Fire Marshal’s Office ultimately released a more complete version of the report after Schutz wrote to the state on the Anchor’s behalf. But Schutz said that kind of exchange is part of the problem: Requesters often have to challenge redactions before agencies will release information that should have been public in the first place.
“It is not unusual for public agencies to take an overly cautious approach to responding to requests for investigative information, and to review and release more information when pressed,” Schutz said. “The iterative process — a back and forth between the requester and agency over objections or redactions — is not atypical. What is unusual is the extent to which the agency erred on the side of excessive secrecy and then had to substantially walk that back.
Silverman said the same practical problem affects news organizations and members of the public across Maine and beyond. Even when a requester believes records have been improperly withheld, litigation is often too expensive and time-consuming to pursue.
“News organizations and other individuals and parties walk away because they don’t have the resources or the time or the money to pursue litigation, and that’s really unfortunate,” Silverman said. “There should be another way.”