LePage’s handwritten notes show failings in Maine’s record retention law

Source: Kennebec Journal

Gov. Paul LePage’s habit of sending colorful, blunt and occasionally perplexing handwritten notes to legislators and constituents has been portrayed as yet another facet of his distinctive, controversial style of governing.

But on top of being highly personal, the governor’s method of communicating is also highly perishable.

Neither the governor nor his staff apparently makes copies of his letters – even when the topic at hand involves his official duties as Maine’s chief boss.

For example, LePage’s threat to strip Good Will-Hinckley school in Fairfield of $530,000 in state funding if it hired House Speaker Mark Eves as its next president was communicated in a handwritten note from the governor to the school’s board chairman, Jack Moore. Moore has said he may have discarded the note, and a copy was not among the documents the governor’s office released to the Portland Press Herald last week in response to a Freedom of Access Act request for all records related to the Good Will-Hinckley matter.

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Read more: http://www.centralmaine.com/2015/08/17/lepages-handwritten-notes-show-failings-in-maines-record-retention-law/