It wasn’t the best of weeks for the Maine Heritage Policy Center.

Thursday evening, the left-leaning group Maine’s Majority released a plethora of emails – all the fruits of a months-long freedom of access effort – showing just how chummy the Maine Heritage Policy Center is with the Republican establishment now running our state government.

My favorite: An exchange between state Treasurer Bruce Poliquin and Peter Anastos, chairman of the Maine State Housing Authority, involving an op-ed piece Anastos planned to submit to Maine’s newspapers. Before doing so, Poliquin advises, Anastos should first “run it by Lance” – a buddy-to-buddy reference to Lance Dutson, the policy center’s chief executive officer.

Then on Friday, the Legislature’s Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability, or OPEGA, released its long-awaited “rapid response” report on alleged skulduggery at the Maine State Housing Authority.

The investigation, spawned largely by the Maine Heritage Policy Center’s crusade against recently departed housing authority Director Dale McCormick, found “no indications of fraud” by McCormick or any other staff member.

What’s more, while OPEGA did find some expenditures it considered unnecessary and a few accounting procedures that needed tweaking, the watchdog agency declared the $4.3 million in housing authority expenditures it examined “to be generally consistent with its mission and primary activities.”

Advertisement

Little wonder what reigned only a few months ago as the Maine Heritage Policy Center’s cause celebre has now been reduced to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it afterthought.

A full news cycle after the rest of Maine’s media ran detailed accounts of the OPEGA findings, The Maine Wire, the policy center’s “news service,” could only bring itself to report, “This is still a developing story.”

All of which makes this a particularly relevant time to revisit a question that has hung over the Maine Heritage Policy Center since its then-CEO, Tarren Bragdon, stepped in to run the transition team for newly elected Gov. Paul LePage back in 2010: What do we call this nonprofit organization that, month after month, exerts so much influence over Maine’s elected and appointed officials?

A successful political advocacy group? No doubt.

A rallying point for Maine’s conservative base? That too.

But those labels no longer do the policy center justice. Last week’s developments show once and for all exactly what this onetime “think tank” has become since its corporate-driven constituency took over the State House:

Advertisement

Goodbye, private, nonprofit organization. Hello, wholly owned government subsidiary.

“I would love to think that I pull the strings and run the government,” policy center CEO Dutson mused in an interview Friday. “But frankly I’m Peter Principled out of that capacity.”

Hey, at least the guy’s being honest. But Dutson is also right – far from running our increasingly dysfunctional state government, the Maine Heritage Policy Center now exists, first and foremost, to enable it.

Consider this email last January from Poliquin, a member of the housing authority’s board, to Dutson, who had just obtained a leaked copy of a report on a series of failed housing-unit inspections:

Poliquin: “Can yu give us exec summary or even bullet points after reading. Most important is pinning msha down on knowing for 2 years and not fixing. And other ways to demonstrate incompetence. Thx.”

Dutson, who dutifully attached a one-paragraph summary:  “Will do. Here’s a teaser: …”

Advertisement

Then there’s this exchange around the same time between Dutson and housing authority Chairman Anastos about an impending release of information by McCormick:

Dutson: “Is there going to be a friday afternoon document dump?”

Anastos: “I don’t know. I suppose I could have called her back before 5 (she called about 4:30). Just didn’t want to.”

(Now that’s leadership, huh Mr. Chairman?)

None of this, of course, is a particularly big deal to Dutson, who insisted Friday that the Maine Heritage Policy Center is like any other lobbying or advocacy group that “interacts with government on behalf of whatever their cause is.”

And that’s all the policy center is doing here?

Advertisement

“I think we’re doing it probably more successfully than a lot of people,” Dutson conceded.

And why is that?

“Well,” he replied, “we are the beneficiaries right now of an ideologically sympathetic government.”

No argument there. But in becoming Augusta’s “beneficiary,” the policy center simultaneously has become the Republican-controlled state government’s go-to subsidiary for “research” that supports the GOP agenda, “news” that unfailingly reveres the Republicans and disdains all things Democratic, and “advocacy” that comes complete with tar and feathers.

Maine’s Majority founder Chris Korzen said Friday that he fully expected last week’s batch of emails would prove that Dutson, Poliquin and Anastos were in fact out to get ousted Director McCormick from the get-go.

What surprised Korzen, though, was ample evidence of the Maine Heritage Policy Center “insinuating itself into the whole government process.”

Advertisement

“I think the (policy center) is not only helping to drive the policy agenda of the LePage administration (and) the Maine Republican Party, but they’re actively colluding with public officials to advance a political agenda,” Korzen said.

Colluding … serving … enabling … whatever you call it, it’s a pretty decent gig for guys like Dutson.

That said, they might want to keep an eye on that bank account: The policy center’s total revenues, according to public filings with the Internal Revenue Service, have dropped from $1.3 million in 2009 to $1 million in 2010 to just under $730,000 last year.

(Dutson won’t say where that money comes from because “there are political groups out there that will attack people who support groups like ours and we don’t want to subject our supporters to that.” Pot, meet kettle.)

But we digress. The takeaway from last week’s headlines, at least for anyone who’s been watching this private-public tango the last couple of years, is not that the Maine Heritage Policy Center and Maine’s state government are joined at the hip, after all.

Rather, it’s that they’re all so darned proud of it.

Advertisement

Contacted Saturday morning, public official Anastos said he has no problem checking in regularly with private operative Dutson “because he’s a friend.”

“I don’t think it’s inappropriate to talk to (the Maine Heritage Policy Center) and discuss policy or anything else with them,” Anastos said. “To me, it’s Republicans talking to Republicans. And if that’s bad, hang me.”

Not until we run it by Lance.

Columnist Bill Nemitz can be contacted at 791-6323 or at:

bnemitz@mainetoday.com


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.