AUGUSTA — The Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee decided today to send subpoenas seeking records from five vendors that provided gift cards to the Maine Turnpike Authority. It also asked turnpike senior staff, board members and a few vendors to be prepared to testify under oath on April 15.
Republican Sen. Roger Katz, committee co-chairman, says the panel intends to get to the bottom of the $157,000 in gift cards given to dozens of organizations and trade groups.
The committee today also continued its investigation into the authority’s lobbying practices.
The committee is considering drafting legislation that would ban the authority as well as other state agencies from hiring lobbyists.
It may also require that the authority give the Legislature access to all of its budget data, including its “budget reserve account,” essentially a cash account that to date has been shielded from legislative scrutiny.
That account included the roughly $157,000 worth of gift cards that the authority donated but could not explain with any documentation. Separate from the gift cards but documented in the same account, the authority also donated $450,000 to a number of organizations and trade groups.The spending occurred between 2005 and 2005. It was identified by the Legislature’s Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability, which issued its report in January.
While there is no state law prohibiting the state agencies from hiring outside lobbyists, many agencies have the impression that the practice is prohibited, Assistant Attorney General Phyllis Gardiner told the committee this morning. Except in rare cases, agencies have used their own staff to lobby lawmakers, she said.
Addressing the legality of donating money to outside groups, the “public use doctrine” limits spending by state agencies to those that benefit a public purpose, she said.
She said she doesn’t have enough information about the authority’s intentions to determine whether its donations had a public purpose.
The authority donated money to about 40 groups, including more than $100,000 to the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, $2,500 to the Maine Irish Heritage Center, $1,000 to the Nature Conservancy of Maine, $10,000 to the Maine Center for Economic Policy, $10,000 to the Maine Restaurant Association and $27,000 to Maine Preservation.
The Associated Press also contributed to this story.
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