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LePage Seeks To Circumvent Attorney General On DHHS Lawyers

Maine Public
Gove. LePage 2018

Governor Paul LePage and Attorney General Janet Mills are at it again.

The two political rivals are at odds over LePage’s effort to restore eight attorney positions within the Department of Health and Human services. Mills, however, says her office should be involved.

The Department wants to restore funding for eight positions that would otherwise be eliminated July 1. Those staffers would be attorneys who do contract reviews and provide internal legal advice.

In a testimony before the legislature’s Appropriations Committee, Deputy Commissioner Mike Mahar says there are a lot of contracts that have be scrutinized.

“It’s a very large workload,” he says. “I think the department is…we’re trying to get down the contract numbers but we probably are fluctuating around 1300 to 1500 annually.”

Mahar says it’s also easier to have in house legal help than to ask the Attorney General’s office for advice on various issues, including contracts. He also says the in-house attorneys would not represent the state in court. But Attorney General Janet Mills says the law in Maine is clear, and it is her office that represents the state and should, therefore, approve any hiring of legal staff that work on its behalf.

“As a lawyer, there is no question what the practice of law is or what legal services means,” Mills says. “It’s not just going to court, as any of you know, when you hire a lawyer you often hire a lawyer to keep you out of court.”

Credit Maine Public
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Maine Public
AG Janet Mills 2015

Mills argues that her office has experts in contract law as well as litigation, and that when an assistant attorney general is representing an agency in any matter they have access to that expertise. She says the lawyers that DHHS has hired have never met or consulted with her.

Westbrook Rep. Drew Gattine, who co-chairs the committee and once worked in the AG’s office, agrees with Mills.

“If there is a need for additional legal capacity, my point of view is that it would be better off to build that capacity within the Attorney General’s office and not within any of the various agencies of state government. I am not singling out DHHS,” Gattine says.

Gattine says if the case can be made that more staff are needed to handle the workload, he would consider adding new positions within the AG’s office.

Some see this dispute as just the latest illustration of the ongoing political rift between the Republican LePage Administration and AG Mills, who is seeking the Democratic nomination to replace him as governor this year.

“From where I sit right now, it looks like I’ve got two bureaucracies fighting with one another on who wants to be the bigger one. But, in the end, we have to get the work done,” says Rep. Tom Winsor, the Republican house lead on the committee.

Committee members asked for additional information before they consider the bill at a work session later in the week. They want to know more about the legal workload at the department and about the actual job descriptions for the 8 positions, which would cost close to a million dollars a year.

Journalist Mal Leary spearheads Maine Public's news coverage of politics and government and is based at the State House.