The Lewiston city council is at the center of a dispute over the rules governing the transparency of public meetings.
Lewiston councilor Scott Harriman first raised concerns about other councilors meeting in private in an Op-Ed in the Lewiston SunJournal in March of last year. He repeated those concerns again last spring and again this fall during a Sept. 19 council meeting when he questioned whether four councilors had conspired to put a last-minute resolution on the agenda. In response, Councilor Bob McCarthy said they had spoken by phone but did not break any rules.
"If I call Lee and get his opinion and I call Larry and get his opinion and I call Rick and get his opinion, there's nothing wrong with that," McCarthy said.
A few weeks later on Oct. 3, then-council president Linda Scott elevated the concerns by asking that the city attorney look into a meeting the four councilors had held at a bar, allegedly to discuss city business, including a possible resolution on a state referendum question.
"I want the attorney involved because we all know that you don't think you're doing anything wrong," Scott said. "And apparently you don't have the ability, as our city administrator has suggested, to govern ourselves."
Scott's allegations set off a firestorm of criticism — even threats — from the accused councilors, including Lee Clement. He said the allegations were politically motivated, as councilors are up for re-election in November.
"This is politics at its worst," Clement said. "And I want to caution you that you want to be very careful where you step madam, because I have teeth and I will bite back."
But councilors Scott and Harriman stood by the assertions that their four colleagues had violated Maine's Freedom of Access law — and have been doing so for awhile.
"You've been called out on this over and over and over, over the past two years," said Harriman. "You were called out at our last meeting, and then you immediately went out and met again. You did it again. I mean, the people of Lewiston deserve a lot better than this."
The public dispute caught the attention of state Attorney General Aaron Frey, who sent a letter to council members expressing concern that they didn't understand their obligations under Maine law. Frey says the law requires that the public be given notice for meetings that involve three or more public officials.
But the city attorney for Lewiston, Marty Eisenstein, says that the law only kicks in when there's a quorum discussing public business. And he says not all four councilors of the 7-member council were present at all times at the bar, and so he didn't see a violation. In the latest turn, the accused councilors this week voted to censure Scott Harriman and remove Linda Scott from her role as council president.
"This has nothing to do with my hurt feelings," said Councilor Rick LaChapelle during Tuesday night's meeting despite objections from members of the public. "This has everything to do with truths."
LaChapelle was subsequently voted in as president by himself and the three other councilors accused of meeting improperly. Speaking by phone later, LaChapelle said he believes they had been vindicated.
"I feel that the attorney general erred," LaChapelle said. "He said he reviewed the two video clips of the city council meetings. Well, if you just review that, obviously it's really easy to come to the conclusion he came to by just reviewing that and not doing really any in depth look at what happened."
Attorney General Aaron Frey acknowledges he doesn't know all the details — and that's the point.
"If you're talking about public business, by telephone tree, if you're talking about public business at a bar in Lewiston, you're absolutely right, that I'm not going to have the full story. That is not what FOAA requires," he says.
Frey says FOAA requires "that if you're going to be a city councilor, and you're going to be talking about decisions that you're going to be making at a meeting or resolutions that you're going to be putting in and you start bringing in your confederates, you need to have those conversations in public because the public deserves to know exactly what led to that. It's important, and it's lawfully required."
The Attorney General says he remains concerned that some Lewiston councilors don't understand their obligations under the Freedom of Access Act, and don't seem willing to.
"Certainly, whenever there whenever there's evidence that suggests that there are clear violations of a law, this office really has a duty to look into whether or not it's something that we need to hold somebody accountable on," he says.
It's unclear whether that will be necessary for the Lewiston council, says Frey. But he hopes that the members will contact Maine’s Public Access Ombudsman for a refresher on their duty to Lewiston citizens to be transparent in their deliberations and decision making.
