We have entered a new, bizarre chapter of the Gov. LePage/Speaker Mark Eves/Good Will-Hinckley saga.
In case you’ve missed the backstory, Gov. LePage is being investigated by the Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee for forcing the firing of Democratic House Speaker Mark Eves as president of the charity Good Will-Hinckley by threatening to withhold state funding for a school for at-risk children.
On Thursday, the committee heard testimony on the matter from key LePage administration officials who were forced to appear by subpoena after refusing to attend voluntarily.
I call this chapter “bizarre” mostly because of how it has been covered in the media. The headline on Page A1 of the Portland Press Herald on Friday, after the committee meeting, was “Degree of threat debated.” In the Morning Sentinel, it was “LePage staffers deny threat in hearing.” The Maine Public Broadcasting Network held a debate on their “Across the Aisle” segment titled “Did LePage Threaten Good Will-Hinckley or Not?”
I understand that the committee needs to get to the bottom of what exactly occurred when within the administration, but this implication by news outlets that there’s some question of whether a threat was made at all is ludicrous.
Not only do officers of Good Will-Hinckley say they were threatened (and that the threat to withhold funding was the only reason they gave up on Eves, their unanimous choice to lead the organization), but Gov. LePage has publicly, proudly and repeatedly confirmed that he threatened them.
“Yeah, I did,” LePage told reporters in June when asked if he threatened to pull $530,000 in annual funding in order to get Eves fired. “If I could, I would. Absolutely. Why wouldn’t I? Tell me why I wouldn’t take the taxpayer money, to prevent somebody to go into a school and destroy it. Because (Eves’) heart’s not into doing the right thing for Maine people.”
In a written release from his office, titled “Governor Stands by His Decision to Oppose Selection of Speaker Eves to Run Charter School,” LePage went even further, declaring: “To provide half-a-million dollars in taxpayer funding to a charter school that would be headed by Maine’s most vehement anti-charter-school politician is not only the height of hypocrisy, it is absolutely unacceptable.”
I’m not sure how much more clear you can get. Yes, I guess you could argue that Gov. LePage has a long and well-documented history of stating falsehoods about his actions and public policy, but it would make no sense for him to do so here, especially where he has just as long a record of using similar funding threats to get his way.
The details of this case, and how exactly the threat was delivered, are important, especially for the civil lawsuit brought by the speaker against the governor, but the overriding facts are not in dispute: Gov. LePage threatened the funding of the school, and Good Will-Hinckley, in turn, fired Eves.
The bigger questions the Legislature will have to address once the committee completes its detail work are:
• 1. Was it outside the purview of the governor to make these kinds of threats based on his personal animosity against and policy disagreements with Speaker Eves?
• 2. If it was, does the degree of his abuse of power require the Legislature to take action?
The elephant in the room, looming over the entire proceeding, is that if both questions are answered in the affirmative, the only remedy may be impeachment and trial. That’s the step that many, including the editorial writers of this newspaper, have already called for, but as the process drags on, it seems less likely to happen.
The launching of an impeachment trial requires only a majority in the House, which Democrats have, but removal from office or other serious penalties would require a two-thirds vote of the Senate, which Republicans control.
So far, no sitting elected Republicans have said anything even approaching endorsing that step. The closest is when Sen. Roger Katz of Augusta acknowledged that LePage may have acted “outside the discretion that the government may have” (for which LePage branded him “biased” and demanded that he step down from the Government Oversight Committee).
Without at least some Republicans leading the charge, impeachment would seem likely to be a fruitless endeavor, and something of a waste of time against a governor who seems to be more and more of a lame duck.
Perhaps things will change after the committee finishes its work – perhaps some small detail they reveal will spark Republican opposition that Gov. LePage’s big threats haven’t yet – but don’t count on it, especially as we head into an election year.
Mike Tipping is a political junkie who works for the Maine People’s Alliance. He can be contacted at:
writebacktomike@gmail.com
Twitter: @miketipping
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