AUGUSTA, Maine — The Maine Legislature's Government Oversight Committee Thursday voted to issue subpoenas to two top advisors to Gov. Paul LePage.
The committee is investigating the chain of events that prompted the board of Good Will-Hinckley in Fairfield to withdraw a job offer to House Speaker Mark Eves after LePage threatened to withhold state funds to the nonprofit.
The committee would like to hear from Cynthia Montgomery, the governor's legal counsel, and Aaron Chadbourne, a senior policy advisor, but both have declined to testify, citing a separate lawsuit brought by Eves against LePage.
But Republican state Sen. Roger Katz, co-chair of the committee, rejects that excuse, and points to a past case involving document shredding at the Maine Center for Disease Control.
"They're essentially saying that, 'Look, there's a lawsuit going on and it would be inappropriate for us to come and testify with a pending lawsuit,'" Katz says. "That's the same line of reasoning we heard in the CDC case with the document shredding. This committee rejected that line of argument then and we were right to do so. Because those people came, they came under subpoena, we had an opportunity to question them — we did learn a lot from them. And guess what? The lawsuit went on, life went on and the case ended up being settled."
Now Katz and another Republican have joined Democrats on the committee in voting to issue subpoenas compelling Montgomery and Chadbourne to appear before the panel.
Four other Republican committee members voted against the subpoenas, including Sen. David Burns of Whiting. Burns said that while he disapproved of several of the actions undertaken by LePage and his staff in the Eves affair, he could not see what else would be gained by taking the unusual step of compelling the governor's advisors to appear before the panel.
"I'm not going to know any more after you subpoena these people than I know right now," Burns says. "We know what happened, the governor told us what happened, to me it matched up quite well with what OPEGA told us what happened. If there's enough information for the Legislature to take action, based on what we know and what he's admitted, go ahead. If there isn't, then let's move on to something else."
But moving on isn't something that the majority of the panelists are interested in doing.
Committee members Rep. Bob Duchesne, a Hudson Democrat, and Rep. Ann Marie Mastraccio, a Sanford Democrat, say that there are too many unanswered questions, and that Montgomery and Chadbourne could potentially provide important information about the developments that led up to the governor's threat to withhold funding from Good Will-Hinckley.
As the result of testimony offered during the panel's public hearing, which included calling for LePage's resignation or impeachment, Duchesne says the panel is obligated to dig deeper.
"The public in their testimony today really wanted us to go farther than our charge, but at a dead minimum they want us to not be stonewalled," Duchesne says. "So I think momentum will probably build to at least compel the testimony that we need to be able to find the facts that we were charged to find."
Much of what's already been uncovered in news reports about the chain of events was confirmed during the hearing when Jack Moore, chairman of the board of the Good Will-Hinckley charter school, testified at length before the committee.
Moore says he received a note at his home from LePage in which the governor made it clear that he would withhold half a million dollars in state funding unless the school rescinded its contract to hire Eves as its next president.
LePage has sparred with Eves throughout his tenure as governor and has publicly stated that Eves is not qualified to hold the job, and has voted against charter schools in the past.
Moore told the committee that if LePage followed through with his threat, the school would have lost millions in grant funding from the Harold Alfond Foundation, and would have defaulted on a maintenance loan.
Moore did not hesitate when asked if he felt threatened by the implications of LePage's note.
"Well, absent the funding," he says, "it would have been threatening for the school."
Before adjourning, the committee voted to extend invitations but be prepared to subpoena more LePage staffers involved in the affair, including acting Department of Education Commissioner Tom Desjardin, who is recovering from an accident.