Last week, news broke that Good Will-Hinckley had rescinded its job offer to Democratic House Speaker Mark Eves. Immediately, Eves accused Governor Paul R. LePage of threatening to withhold state funding unless Good Will-Hinckley fired Eves. The governor fired back in a press release, claiming that Eves’ past opposition to charter schools disqualified him from the job. Furthermore, the governor alleged that Eves’ hiring was not the product of a fair selection process, but the result of political cronyism.
“This back-room deal between cronies is exactly the kind of political corruption I came to Augusta to fight against,” the Governor said. “I will not stand for it and neither will the Maine people. Speaker Eves has been an ardent foe of charter schools for his entire political career, then he turns around and gets hired to run a charter school—whose board is chaired by Eves’ own State House employee—for a cushy job worth about $150,000 in total compensation.”
Since then, people have gone back and forth about whether or not Speaker Eves was qualified to be President of Good Will-Hinckley, but no one has been able to really explain what the president does, or what qualifications the board considered in its hiring process.
The Maine Wire has obtained a copy of the job description for President of Good Will-Hinckley, which has been removed from their website. Hopefully, this document will shed some light on why Good Will-Hinckley hired Eves in the first place, and show us what qualifications Eves did or did not meet.