PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - Gov. Paul LePage’s administration and Attorney General Janet Mills’ office squared off in front of Maine’s highest court on Thursday over what powers the state’s top attorney should have when she disagrees with cases the administration pursues.
LePage wants the court to decide whether he must continue to seek permission from Mills to hire outside lawyers when she declines to represent him. It’s the latest in a series of public battles between Mills, a Democrat elected by lawmakers, and the Republican LePage, who has been forced to hire private attorneys in two recent legal matters regarding Medicaid and welfare.
Holly Lusk, a lawyer representing LePage, told the Supreme Judicial Court that the administration’s relationship with its attorneys must be “unfettered and uninfluenced” by Mills’ personal views. She argued that it’s inappropriate for the attorney general to limit how long the administration can retain lawyers or how much it can spend.
When asked by Justice Andrew Mead whether she was believes that the governor should get a “blank check,” Lusk said that LePage is accountable to the people.
“I believe that someone who is elected by almost 300,000 people in the state of Maine has just as much interest in maintaining fiscal responsibility” as Mills, “who was elected by an unknown number of people in the Legislature,” she said during Thursday’s nearly hour-long hearing.
Assistant Attorney General Phyllis Gardiner argued that state law affords Mills the power to sign off on the hiring of outside counsel and to manage how much money is spent. She dismissed the notion that Mills has sought to control the legal steps the administration can take.
But one justice appeared to take issue with that argument.
“Money talks,” Justice Ellen Gorman said. “The person who controls the purse strings controls the litigation.”
LePage’s administration spent nearly $53,000 from his contingency fund on private lawyers last year to appeal the federal government’s denial of his request to remove 6,000 young adults from the state’s Medicaid rolls, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press through a Freedom of Access Act Request. After a federal judge denied LePage’s appeal in November, he petitioned to the U.S. Supreme Court this month.
Mills not only declined to represent LePage in that case, but joined the opponents as an intervener. Because of that conflict, Gardiner said her office has not capped how much the administration can spend, but only advised how much the work should cost.
The governor also hired outside counsel to defend a lawsuit filed by the Maine Municipal Association, which is challenging the state’s directive that cities and towns withhold municipal welfare benefits to immigrants who are living in the state illegally. The administration initially asked for $50,000 to spend on legal fees in that case, but the attorney general granted only about half of that, Lusk said.
There is no deadline by which the justices have to make a decision and they may decline to answer the questions.
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