The Attorney General will now be looking at the issue of the shredding of documents at Maine’s Centers for Disease Control, after the Government Oversight Committee voted Wednesday to refer the case to Janet Mills.
The letter sent to the AG stopped short of saying that GOC had determined that the CDC had willfully obstructed or violated Maine’s Freedom of Access Act.
Sen. Roger Katz, R-Augusta, ranking member of the committee, had said that he believes that CDC had altered the grant process, then covered their tracks by destroying older documents that showed the scoring of applicants for a Healthy Maine Partnership competitive grant.
Many Democrats agreed with him, but Republicans did not, and in the end, the committee elected to punt their responsibility. Nobody wanted to taint the well of whatever tattered goodwill may be left in the Legislature, as they begin to consider legislative changes to ensure that state agencies have protocols outlining a code of ethics for state employees who believe they are under pressure to commit unethical or illegal acts.
It was a unanimous vote.
Now, no one, Republican or Democrat, thinks CDC did the right thing. The one thing they can agree on is that CDC’s behavior with respect to the shredding of the documents was not acceptable.
But while Katz and the Democrats believe that CDC willfully destroyed a narrative that they didn’t want revealed for political reasons, what the Republicans seem to be suggesting is that CDC is populated by incompetents who didn’t understand Rule One about public documents.
That is, public documents don’t belong to state employees, or their agencies. They belong to the public. The documents are not theirs to destroy at any time, for any reason.
Forty years after Watergate, the most junior public servant, or even college intern, should know that.
They should also know that shredding documents for political purposes tends to get them and their political bosses in serious trouble.
Most civil servants are not political. They are working hard to perform the necessary functions of government, and they survive Democratic and Republican administrations and Legislatures. They need a system that will allow them to stand up and say, “No, I won’t do that. It’s illegal.” They should not be threatened with losing their jobs when they do so, and they should be encouraged to report such illegal requests, without repercussion, to an impartial agency who will deal with the issue on their behalf.
And on the outside chance that the Republicans are correct and that CDC employees really are just innocent incompetents who didn’t know they weren’t supposed to shred the public record, the Attorney General’s Office has suggested forming a task force to develop better guidelines for record retention, model policies for state agencies, training requirements for supervisors, and accountability systems. Members of the Government Oversight Committee indicated Wednesday that they are willing to accept the recommendations.
But the AG must take on the core issue — the fact that certain supervisors in the CDC acted as if FOAA didn’t apply to them. It did and it does, and if the public is to trust its public officials in the future, there must be some serious accountability now.
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