AP quotes Brewer in article on cost of lawsuits
The Associated Press spoke with Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine, for a report about the costs of lawsuits involving Gov. Paul LePage. Lawsuits in which LePage hired outside legal representation have cost the state at least $110,000 since last fall, raising the total expenditures to at least half a million dollars over the past four years, according to a review by the AP. LePage sued Democratic Attorney General Janet Mills for joining a legal effort in support of protections for young immigrants facing deportation. He also is suing her for refusing to provide him with public records concerning Mills’ opposition of immigration bans imposed by President Trump, according to the article. Maine’s attorney general is the only one in the country to be appointed by the Legislature, so Mills doesn’t answer to the executive branch, the article states. Throw on top of that strong personalities and partisanship, and there’s a recipe for clashes, said Brewer. “We know that Paul LePage has an outsized kind of personality. He’s combative. He’s a scrapper. He’s certainly not going to back down from a confrontation. And Janet Mills has an independent, combative streak of her own, so she sort of enjoys going up against the governor,” he said. San Francisco Chronicle, Boston.com, Portland Press Herald and WGME (Channel 13 in Portland) carried the AP report.