AUGUSTA, Maine — Democrats went on the attack against Gov. Paul LePage Friday over a report by Bangor Daily News blogger Mike Tipping that the governor threatened to withhold $500,000 from the 2014 World Acadian Congress unless it ousted its president.
The LePage administration denied the accuracy of the report in stark terms.
Tipping, who is spokesman for the Maine People’s Alliance and an aggressive opponent of LePage, reported Friday that several members of the World Acadian Congress’ governing board, the Maine Regional Coordinating Committee of the 2014 World Acadian Congress, confirmed LePage forced the resignation of Jason Parent, who had led the organization of the 2014 World Acadian Congress for more than four years. LePage allegedly threatened to withhold $500,000 from the two-week celebration of Acadian ancestry.
“What I was told is it was either get rid of Jason Parent or you lose your funding,” Anne Roy, a board member and director of the Acadian Village Museum, told Tipping. Tipping also wrote that five other board members confirmed, some off the record, losing state funding was a concern.
Roy and others said LePage’s action was a result of his displeasure over Parent publicly presenting a commemorative World Acadian Congress license plate to former Maine 2nd Congressional District Rep. Mike Michaud, who was LePage’s Democratic opponent in the 2014 gubernatorial election.
The LePage administration declined to answer questions from the Bangor Daily News Friday but emailed a lengthy list of rebuttals.
“Did Gov. LePage ever threaten to pull funding from the World Acadian Congress?” reads the email. “No.”
Following the same question-and-answer format, the email accuses Tipping of relying on “speculation, second-hand accounts and hearsay” and states LePage supported a $1 million appropriation through the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development after federal officials declined to fund the event.
The list of questions also alleged Parent had a turbulent relationship with the organizing board and that he and Roy are Democratic operatives who “would like to smear the governor.” It also attacked the Bangor Daily News for publishing the blog.
LePage Communications Director Peter Steele, told Fiddlehead Focus, an online news organization based in Fort Kent, there is “no truth” to Tipping’s blog.
“He is trying to make a link there that is not there,” Steele told the publication. “He’ll burn down the World Acadian Congress if he has to.”
Fiddlehead Focus quoted another committee member, Lorraine Pelletier-Marston, denying LePage threatened to withhold funds.
Tipping stood by his story but acknowledged the allegations need more investigation.
“I contacted the LePage administration several times when looking into this,” Tipping said. “[LePage staff member] Danny Deveau hung up on me twice when I asked him if he had threatened the funding. They definitely could have said that it didn’t happen before now.”
This is not the first time LePage has been accused of leveraging state funds to oust an administrator he doesn’t agree with.
In January, when LePage was presenting his biennial state budget proposal, he called for the resignation of Maine Community College System President John Fitzsimmons, who resigned shortly after. LePage’s budget proposal sought to flat-fund community colleges while providing modest increases for the University of Maine System and Maine Maritime Academy because, he told reporters, Fitzsimmons and the community college system had not made enough progress on some of LePage’s goals.
And then in late May of this year, LePage threatened to withhold more than $500,000 a year in state funding from Good Will-Hinckley in Fairfield unless it withdrew an employment offer from Democratic House Speaker Mark Eves of North Berwick. LePage has publicly confirmed he made that threat, which is now under investigation by the Legislature’s watchdog agency, the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability.
“I think [the World Acadian Congress] claims, where they are in some cases at least second-hand, they do need to be viewed in the context of the larger history of LePage using the financial authority of his office,” Tipping said.
Maine Democratic Party Chairman Phil Bartlett said in a written statement the incident needs more investigation.
“If a bully goes unchecked, he will continue to abuse his power and punish those who disagree with him,” Bartlett said. “For that reason, I urge state lawmakers and state and federal authorities to immediately look into these allegations at [World Acadian Congress] to ensure that no laws were broken and that the governor is held accountable for his actions.”
Eves said the new allegations follow a “pattern of blackmail” by LePage to “punish his political opponents and to intimidate all public officials.”
“His abuse of taxpayer dollars should be a wake up call to every citizen in this state,” Eves said.
Beth Ashcroft, director of the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability, said Friday afternoon she had received no formal requests for an investigation into the allegations in Tipping’s blog.
