At Maine’s Department of Education, Not All Public Records Requests are Equal

Records obtained under Maine’s Freedom of Access Act (FOAA) show that the Maine Department of Education (DOE) ignored and unnecessarily delayed a request for public records filed by the Maine Wire in June 2023.

[RELATED: Facebook (Meta) Censors Thousands of Mainers After SCOTUS Green Lights Feds to Coerce Social Media…]

According to records obtained from a separate request, DOE Communications Director Marcus Mrowka failed for over a year to forward the June 2023 request to DOE’s public access liason.

Almost immediately after the request was received, and even before alerting DOE Commissioner Pender Makin, Mrowka forwarded the email to Scott Ogden, a political aide to Gov. Janet Mills.

Nearly a year would pass before Mrowka shared the email with anyone at DOE responsible for processing such requests.

The FOAA in question centered on records regarding the implementation of Maine’s LD 1664, which requires that all Maine public schools integrate “African American Studies” and “The History of Genocide” into their core curriculum.

House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross (D-Portland) had weeks earlier told a crowd of political sympathizers in Portland that DOE’s implementation of that law had been delayed by white supremacist culture.

DOE’s negligence in implementing the law was so egregious, Ross said, that “we should all be storming the capitol.”

“The Department of Education has not done its job, and it has had plenty of time to do it,” said Ross.

“For me to think that my history, in order for it to be taught, has to be put on a platform called MOOSE and not instructional in the classroom, is part of the oppressive, suppressive, supremist [sic] system and ideology that the Department of Education learned from,” she said.

“We should all storm the institution, out of anger that this is the attitude that they’ve taken about our history,” she said. “We should be storming the Capitol. Really, I’m serious.”

The Maine Wire, in an effort to investigate the plague of white supremacy at DOE, filed the request shortly after publishing exclusive video of Ross leveling her allegation against the agency.

Under Maine law, any government employee who receives a public records request meant for their agency, but who is not the person responsible for handling public records requests, is nonetheless required to forward the request to the appropriate agency employee and notify the requester that the request was forwarded.

The FOAA statute states:

“An agency or official that receives a request for a public record that is maintained by that agency but is not maintained by the office that received the request shall forward the request to the office of the agency or official that maintains the record, without willful delay, and shall notify the requester that the request has been forwarded and that the office to which the request has been forwarded will acknowledge receipt within 5 working days of receiving the request. “

Mrowka appears to have done none of those things, according to a review of emails obtained by the Maine Wire.

Before responding to the FOAA request, which he was legally required to do within five business days, Mrowka forwarded the request to Ogden, who has nothing to do with fulfilling FOAAs for the DOE.

After forwarding the email, Mrowka did respond to the request, claiming that the DOE would begin working to gather the information.

“Confirming receipt of this request. We will begin reviewing our files,” said Mrowka.

Mrwoka then ignored the request for months, prompting a follow-up email from The Maine Wire in August, which went ignored.

When no response came to that follow-up by April 2024, The Maine Wire threatened legal action, which was once again ignored.

Finally, another follow-up email from early June 2024 received a response from Mrowka.

“I will check with the team who handles FOAA requests on where this stands in the queue,” said Mrwoka.

In other words, one year after receiving the Maine Wire’s FOAA request — and one year after failing to forward it to the DOA public records office without “willful delay” — Mrowka claimed he was not the person to handle FOAA.

The Maine Wire subsequently requested his communications about public records in an attempt to determine the reason for the year-long delay, as well as other records that might shed light on how the DOE came to mishandle the June 2023 request for public records.

Finally, a year after the initial request was filed, the DOE provided the documents, which the Maine Wire is currently reviewing.

Documents provided in response to a separate request, not made through Mrowka, show that while the DOE had already completed numerous requests submitted in May 2024 by early June, it had ignored The Maine Wire’s request entirely for almost a full year, despite multiple follow-up communications during that time.

The records suggest that Mrowka and the DOE were using separate practices, timelines, and standards for other requestors than they were using for the Maine Wire.

Mrowka, 41, is a resident of Camden who currently serves as the chairman of the school board for that school district. According to his LinkedIn account, Mrowka previously served as a senior level communications director for the left-wing American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers unions in the U.S. and a major Democratic Party backer.

According to a June 7 FOAA tracking log, which the Maine Wire’s request was not included in, DOE had processed multiple requests submitted more than 10 months after the Maine Wire’s within less than 20 days, including some it fulfilled the same day.

The internal FOAA document for the Maine Wire request claims that the request was simply “inadvertently missed” when it was made in April.

It is unclear how the request could have been inadvertently missed, given that Mrowka acknowledged that the request had been received.

Even if Mrowka was not intentionally failing to comply with the request, he may still have violated state law by failing to forward the initial request and follow-up requests to the appropriate authority without delay.