STATE OF MAINE
OFFICE OF GOVERNOR
1 STATE HOUSE STATION
AUGUSTA, MAINE.
04333?0001

 

Paul R. LePage

GOV NOR

22 April 2014

The 126th Legislature of the State of Maine
State House
Augusta, ME

Dear Honorable Members of the 1261!] Legislature:

Under the authority vested in me by Article IV, Part Third, Section 2 of the Constitution
of the State of Maine, I am hereby vetoing LD 1821, ?An Act To Implement Recommendations
of the Right To Know Advisory Committee.?

I am committed to a transparent government that allows the citizens of Maine to easily
access information pertinent to their lives. Indeed, my Administration has taken significant steps
to increase the average citizen?s access to information. We launched a new financial
transparency website to provide Maine citizens with access to basic, easy?to?understand
information regarding state ?nances and government spending. We have responded to thousands
of Freedom to Access Act (FOAA) requests, producing millions of documents. I pushed state
government to be more customer friendly ensuring that everyday requests for information from
citizens are responded to daily without the formality of a FOAA request.

This bill would make minor changes to the FOAA recommended by the Right to Know
Advisory Committee. The purpose of the Advisory Committee is to ?serve as a resource for
ensuring compliance  and upholding the integrity of the purposes underlying [this law] as it
applies to all public entities in the conduct of the public?s business.? Unfortunately, these
recommendations just nibble around the edges of the law without addressing real flaws in it. The
recommendations do not address the use of FOAA by special interest groups to harass the
Executive Branch. They do not address practical concerns that make compliance virtually
impossible for many Executive Branch agencies. They do not address real inequities in the
application of the law to different branches of government as contained in the Advisory
Committee?s mandate to advise on applying the law to ?all? public entities.

The FOAA law, meant to allow access to government, is instead being used as a weapon
to hinder effective and efficient state government. My office has received many overly broad
requests from special interests groups. They request years of all communications between my
office and certain commissioners, my personal grocery bills and other fishing expeditions that
are not about a transparent government. Instead, they are about trying to cripple the operations
of my office with thousands of hours of staff time and creating a distraction from conducting the
people?s business.



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PHONE: [207} 2874531 USERS CALL 'r'll FAX: (207) 257-1034



The Maine State Police testified that they cannot comply with portions of the law dealing
with timing of when a document is received for purposes of the law. If the top law enforcement
agency in the State cannot comply with the law, that is a serious problem that must be addressed.
Yet the Advisory Committee and the Judiciary Committee both declined to make a reasonable
fix to the law.

Most troubling, the FOAA law is inequitable. The Legislature has given itself a ?working
papers? exception, yet refuses to extend the same courtesy to the Executive Branch. We should
either give the Executive Branch a similar exception or strip the Legislature of theirs. Either way,
this inequity should not stand. Until it is righted, the Legislature cannot claim its own operations
are transparent.

Until these major problems with the law are ?xed, I cannot support this legislation.
For these reasons, I return LD 182] unsigned and vetoed. I strongly urge the Legislature to
sustain it.

Sincerely,
Quick). 

Paul R. LePage
Governor