Statehouse Republicans blasted the Mills administration on Tuesday for what several suggested could be criminally-negligent stewardship of public funds in the latest fall-out from an official report from the State Auditor that highlighted lax controls and potential abuses of its contracting process.
“My hat is off to (State Auditor Matt Dunlap, a registered Democrat) for doing the right thing, not the partisan thing,” Senate Minority Leader Trey Stewart (D-Aroostook) said of the auditor’s recent bombshell report, adding that “what we’re looking at is really just the tip of the iceberg, looking just at a random sample of state contracting and in some cases there was a 100% failure rate” when it came to state government following its own procurement rules.
House Minority Leader Billy Bob Bob Faulkingham (R-Winter Harbor) said he would like to be able to call on the state’s attorney general to investigate potential crimes in the systemically unaccountable contracting practices, but lamented he had little faith AG Aaron Frey, who “is too busy suing the Trump administration” could address the matter in a non-partisan fashion.
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On Monday, Rep. Faulkingham testified before a legislative committee on his bill to amend Maine’s constitution to allow for direct election of officers including the attorney general to make them less beholden to political elites in Augusta.
After the auditor’s report became public last week, Maine Senate Republicans wrote to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi asking the Department of Justice investigate patterns of waste, fraud, abuse and potentially corruption revealed in the fimndings.
“Government contracts are big business … winning a state contract can be transformative for a business,” Faulkingham quoted Department of Administrative and Financial Services Director Kirsten Figueroa as saying last year, laying the foundation of suspicion for the widespread cronyism members of his caucus fear was at play in issuing many of the more than $2 billion in sole source contracts.
Out of a sample of 31 sole-sourced contracts, 16 lacked the documentation to provide reasonable documentation to support investigation of why they weren’t put out for competitive bidding, Faulkingham cited the Auditor Dunlap’s report as having found.
Assistant Senate Minority Leader Matt Harrington (R-York) listed off examples of questionable spending by the administration of Governor Janet Mills (D), including a $779,000 to the Bangor Daily News one month before last fall’s election.
“One might argue the Governor was using those funds to buy her own re-election,” Sen. Harrington remarked.
Other examples of eyebrow-raising contracts between the state and media Harrington cited included one for over $100,000 for a social media influencer to bring more racially diverse visitors to Maine.
“The problem is not just cronyism, but malfeasance,” Sen. James Libby (R-Cumberland) said was becoming apparent as one looks at the larger picture. “We’re seeing the stacking of contracts of $5,000 or more and (it looks like) federal and state law have been violated here,” Sen. Libby added.
Calling for “much needed sunlight to this broken process,” Rep. David Boyer (R-Poland) said his bill introduced last week would help bring transparency to an opaque and worrying trend in how state tax dollars are being awarded.
Rep. Boyer’s bill, if enacted, would improve record keeping as well as record preservation to guard against future lapses in accountability.
Sen. Stewart and other GOP legislators stated that deeper investigations into how recent contracts were awarded are only just beginning.
