Finally: pay dirt. I filed a Freedom of Access Act (FOAA) request with the Office of Information Technology for the itemized bill for the government-owned cellular telephone given to Governor LePage for use while traveling that week. If the governor had gone to Jamaica, the bill would show roaming charges from one or more of that country's cellular carriers each time he used it. The records — eminently public — were turned over nearly two months after my request, and finally put the rumor to rest. The phone was used to make numerous calls from Jamaica to Maine and the part of Florida where LePage's family members live starting the afternoon of April 2, and ending the evening of April 8. The phone was back in the US by 11 am on April 11, the day LePage returned to Maine. Let the record show the governor — or at least his phone — was where he said he was that week.
So why did his staff work so hard to prevent us from establishing that they had been telling the truth?
LePage's office isn't saying. In a written response, LePage spokeswoman Adrienne Bennett merely forwarded a link to a Press Herald story on their original announcement of the governor's vacation, adding only: "We did a terrible job of hiding it." The implication: their say-so is all the proof you should need.
Of late, the governor's staff has been making an effort to leave less of a paper trail. LePage — who has refused to use email for this reason — has recently stopped taking notes at meetings. "He told me flat out that the reason was that he didn't want his notes to be FOAA-ed," says Mal Leary, president of the Maine Freedom of Information Coalition. "You can't FOAA what somebody is thinking."
The governor has also complained about this reporter's FOAA requests and about another reporter's request for grocery receipts from the Blaine House. He convened a meeting June 14 to discuss his concerns with representatives of the Maine Civil Liberties Union and Maine Heritage Policy Center. (No notes were taken, according to the governor's staff, because, as Bennett said, "there wasn't a need for them.")
LePage later put his concerns in writing in a July 14 memo to the Right to Know Advisory Committee. "I believe that certain people are abusing [FOAA] for political purposes . . . to gum up the work of my office and prevent us from moving initiatives forward," LePage wrote. "While my team has diligently responded to these requests, none of the information has actually been made public by the requestor." (My Phoenix cover story from this particular set of documents was published six days later; see "The LePage Files," by Colin Woodard, July 22.)
Last week, his staff told us there were no notes, background materials, or scheduling memos in existence related to a March 25 meeting LePage had with Carol Weston, head of the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity. They also claimed there weren't any public records relating to a May 10 meeting with the Maine Pulp and Paper Industry Association, until we pointed out that an industry white paper outlining the policy issues the group wished to discuss was referred to in the governor's schedule for that day.
