News

Man to bring UM to court

By Melanie Morin

Posted on April 11, 2005, at 12:00 a.m.

What began as suspicion and curiosity has evolved into a battle in court for James Labrecque of Flexware Control Technology in Bangor. Labrecque has filed a court appeal against the University of Maine after the university’s administration failed to respond properly to the Freedom of Access request he submitted last Monday. Labrecque submitted the FOI in order to view public records concerning several different areas of concern, including studies which verify information included in a Bangor Daily News article about UMaine’s interest in co-generation. LaBrecque believes the administration has been giving the press incorrect information on purpose in order to increase support for their co-generation plans.

On March 14, the board of trustees created an ad hoc committee to review the idea of co-generation and to decide whether or not to buy a nine-megawatt turbine to provide electricity to the campus. It would also use steam from the steam plant to provide heat to some of the buildings on campus. Though Janet Waldron, vice president of administration and finance, did respond to LaBrecque’s request, she may not have responded in a way that would keep the matter from being taken to court.

Maine’s Freedom of Information Act states the following:

“If any body … who has custody or control of any public record, shall refuse to so inspect of copy or abstract a public record, the denial shall be made by the body or agency or official in writing, stating the reason for denial, within five working days of the request for inspection by any person. ”

Waldron e-mailed and sent a hard copy to LaBrecque the day after he submitted the FOI. In the letter, she said:

“Due to the extensive nature of your request, it will take time to locate and determine if the requested record(s) exist(s), in what for they are kept, and where they are located. Once we have done this, we will inform you what records we find pertinent to you request, and at what location you can inspect them and make copies if you choose to do so … The University is not limited to five days to respond, as you suggest, but has a reasonable time in order to do so.”

Although the university was not required to provide all of the records to LaBrecque within five days, it was required to provide some sort of list of which documents it could or would not provide in order to ward off an appeal. LaBrecque said the university did not contact him concerning the FOI following Waldron’s response. Following the university’s five-day time limit, LaBrecque, according to the Maine Freedom of Information Act, had an additional five days in order to file an appeal. He said he took the university’s lack of information and contact as a denial and had no choice but to take the matter to court. LaBrecque said he believes the university did not provide the information in hopes to be able to ignore the FOI all together.

Anita Wihry, executive director of Facilities Management, said the administration has been working on obtaining the requested records since the FOI was submitted, and that Waldron’s letter should be considered legally as a proper response.

“We’re collecting materials as we speak,” Wihry said. “I can’t imagine we’d have the intention to withhold anything.”

LaBrecque said if the administration had contacted him previously with whatever information they had found at the time, assuring him that the rest of the records would be provided as soon as possible, then he wouldn’t have filed the appeal.

“The part of this that disturbs me is that the taxpayers have to buy an attorney now for absolutely no reason. It’s more of a waste of public money,” LaBrecque said. “If they were reasonable and professional, we could have gotten most of this across in simple discussion.”

Another matter LaBrecque had raised with his FOI is that of Cianbro, a company which LaBrecque suspected was paid $40,000 for a report in June 2004 on a different co-generation proposal. Scott Morrison, Cianbro’s vice president for business development, said that the Marine Applied Physics Corporation, not Cianbro, paid for the report.

“Cianbro volunteered their time for the study. We were never paid,” Morrison said.

LaBrecque said he is glad Cianbro did not pay for what he feels was a worthless study without any substance.

“I had thought it was out of their character,” LaBrecque said. “It’s a good, honest company.”

LaBrecque had suspected Cianbro was paid because the name of the company is on the cover of the report. He included the topic in his FOI in order to find out if they had been paid and, regardless of who was paid, from where the money came. He said he was told by an employee of Facilities Management that the money was taken out of funds for the recreation center.

LaBrecque’s FOI also requests electricity records for the new Engineering and Science Building. He said the electricity costs are around $1,000 per day. Wihry said the university needs to spend a lot of money on electricity because of the presence of a Class 1000 clean room, which requires air to be constantly replaced in order to keep it clean for laboratory purposes, and because of all the large machinery in the building.

LaBrecque presented the court appeal to Interim President Robert Kennedy at Kennedy’s student forum on Thursday. He told Kennedy that engineering students who made comments to The Maine Campus were bullied by the administration into apologizing for and retracting what they said. LaBrecque said that Kennedy told him he was sure that wasn’t the case. LaBrecque said he will ask Kennedy to make a public announcement as to what his position is on the bullying of students or faculty who talk to the press and what assurances and safeguards there are in the event that this sort of bullying occurs to anybody on campus.

LaBrecque has also filed an objection concerning the sub-committee formed by the board of trustees to review the co-generation proposal and make positive recommendation or not to Chancellor Joseph Westphal. LaBrecque said three members of the five-member committee, Dave Wilson, Joanne Yestramski and Janet Waldron should not be allowed to be members because the resolution passed by the board of trustees states that the sub-committee would be made up of members of the Finance-Facilities Committee, to which none of the three belong. LaBrecque said Barry McCrum, chair of the committee, told him the three forced themselves onto the co-generation sub-committee. LaBrecque said the three are administrators, already have expressed their support for the proposal. Even if the other members objected to the proposal, they would have the majority.

“Janet Waldron had a well-planned scheme consisting of all the elements of a surprised attack, including standard bait and switch tactics and arrangements to run interference on opposition to co-generation,” LaBrcque said.

Campus Currents: Janet Waldron