Nearly a dozen Maine lawmakers are backing a bill that would give politicians on the legislature's Government Oversight Committee access to confidential records. The bill is a response to court rulings that say committee members cannot review the same confidential information as the watchdog agency they oversee.
The issue stems from a legal battle between the oversight committee and the Department of Health Human Services over shielded records pertaining to the state's care of four children who were killed in 2021.
Those records were provided to the watchdog agency that the committee oversees and used in investigative reports about the child deaths, but some lawmakers on the panel are unhappy that they don't have access to the same documents.
The oversight committee later sued DHHS, but a judge ruled that the 2002 law that created the oversight committee and the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability purposely gave the watchdog agency different access to sensitive records to guard against their use for partisan purposes.
The law court affirmed that ruling, but now six lawmakers on the 12-member oversight panel are sponsoring a bill to change the law. It will be reviewed by the Legislature's Judiciary Committee in the coming weeks.
