The controversy involving the abrupt firing of Mark Eves by the Good Will-Hinckley School without apparent cause has been deeply troubling to me as a legal layperson.
That no official legal action has been taken as a result of Gov. LePage’s admitted threat to withhold state funding should the school not dismiss Eves is astonishing. To the average citizen, such governmental involvement and pressure in a private contract seem compellingly illegal. It brings to mind that old adage, “There oughta be a law!”
It appears there is a law. Attorney David Jenny, in his op-ed published in the Press Herald on Nov. 23 (“Maine Voices: LePage’s alleged actions against Eves should be in prosecutor’s hands”), has provided a clear, detailed and persuasive framework for legal action against Gov. LePage for his alleged misuse of power.
There may even be another legal avenue in this case. The fired Waterville High School principal’s alleged activities have been legally defined as “official oppression”: the inappropriate wielding of authority to coerce a subordinate.
As attorney Jenny quotes Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: “If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law.”
It is long overdue for the Good Will-Hinckley/Gov. LePage matter to emerge from a suspicious fog of legal uncertainty into bright, cleansing sunlight.
William Ronalds
Rockland
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