AUGUSTA — House Speaker Mark Eves has filed a civil lawsuit in federal court against Republican Gov. Paul LePage.
David Webbert, Eves’ attorney, filed the suit Thursday in U.S. District Court in Portland.
The suit stems from LePage’s involvement with Eves’ employment and subsequent firing from the Good Will-Hinckley School in Fairfield.
Eves, D-North Berwick, was hired to be the school’s president, but LePage is alleged to have threatened school officials with withholding state funding for the nonprofit, which operates education programs for at-risk youths, including some residential programs, if Eves was hired as the top official.
“Acting out of personal rage, vindictiveness, and partisan malice — in June 2015 Governor Paul LePage blackmailed a private school that serves at-risk children into firing its president, the Speaker of Maine’s House of Representatives,” according to the complaint. “LePage knowingly broke federal law by threatening the school’s board chair — in a secret, handwritten note — that essential state funding of over $500,000 budgeted for the school would be withheld unless the speaker was fired. The governor knew that the unexpected loss of that state funding would also cause the school to lose another $2,000,000 in private funding and that these sudden financial losses would put the school out of business.”
Earlier this month, the Legislature’s watchdog Government Oversight Committee voted to have its investigative arm, the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability, investigate whether LePage used state funds as leverage against the school and Eves, a political rival.
LePage has admitted he wrote to the school urging them not to hire Eves, and school officials have said that formal letter and another handwritten by LePage had financial implications for the school, prompting them to dismiss Eves from the job he had not even begun.
LePage has said Eves is unqualified for the job. He has also criticized Eves for taking the job at the nonprofit, which operates a charter school, because Eves had been a vocal opponent to state-funded charter schools during his political career.
The complaint by Eves is against LePage only and does not seek any damages from the state of Maine.
“This is a political lawsuit,” LePage spokeswoman Adrienne Bennett wrote in a short message to the media Thursday. “It has no legal merit and is the Democrats’ concerted attempt to accomplish what they couldn’t at the ballot box inside a courtroom.”
Summary of Eves’ complaint to court:
Summary of the Action
1. Acting out of personal rage, vindictiveness, and partisan malice – in June 2015 Governor Paul LePage blackmailed a private school that serves at-risk children into firing its President, the Speaker of Maine’s House of Representatives. LePage knowingly broke federal law by threatening the School’s Board Chair – in a secret, handwritten note – that essential state funding of over $500,000 budgeted for the School would be withheld unless the Speaker was fired. The Governor knew that the unexpected loss of that state funding would also cause the School to lose another $2,000,000 in private funding and that these sudden financial losses would put the school out of business.
2. LePage, a Republican, retaliated against the Speaker, a Democrat, solely on political grounds relating to the Speaker’s free speech and other First Amendment activities speaking out against and opposing some of the Governor’s policies that were bad for Maine, including those relating to education, energy, and taxation.
3. Only a few weeks earlier on May 29, LePage began a press
conference with a personal tirade directed against the Speaker, including the comment that “Frankly, I think the Speaker of the House should go back home [to California] where he was born.” At this press conference, LePage repeatedly displayed intense personal animosity toward and hurled personal epithets at the Speaker and other Democratic legislators over their opposition to the Governor’s energy policies and his proposal to abolish the income tax.
4. Because of LePage’s blackmail, the School was forced to fire the
Speaker without cause on June 24. LePage’s blackmail of the School unfairly and without due process took away the Speaker’s job that he was counting on to support his wife and three young children.
5. LePage’s blackmail of the School is part of a well-known pattern of using his powers as governor to bully and intimidate anyone who dares to disagree with him. LePage’s continuing abuses of power for partisan purposes threaten to destroy the ability of Maine’s citizen Legislature to serve its vital constitutional function as an independent check on the power of the executive branch.
6. Under Maine law, “[m]embership in the Legislature is not a full-
time occupation and is not compensated on that basis. Thus, “[m]ost Legislators must look to income from private sources, not their public salaries, for their sustenance and support for their families” 1 M.R.S. § 1011.
7. The Speaker brings this action to seek justice for his
family. And also to defend the constitutional right of Maine’s people to an independent Legislature able to do the people’s business based on their best judgment and without fear of political intimidation or vendetta by the executive branch.
8. If LePage is not held personally accountable for his extreme abuse of power against the highest official of Maine’s Legislature, then in the future no Maine citizen or legislator will feel safe in opposing a Governor’s bad policies for fear that the Governor will use the money and power of their government to go after their family and livelihood. In short, a Governor is not above the law and LePage’s abuse of taxpayer money to retaliate against the Speaker of the House and to shut down healthy public debate must not be allowed to stand.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
