Not all smears are national. This one is local. And it’s interesting because of its raw mendacity.
In ‘A Secret Society’, I discussed plans by Maine Senate Democrats to thwart open government and transparency by neutering the MaineOpenGov website operated by The Maine Heritage Policy Center. MaineOpenGov provides information on salary and benefits on Maine state employees and also provides individual employees’ names. No other ‘personal’ information is available on the particular employee.
An employee’s name is hardly private information. No other state restricts this information. Nor does the federal government. In an open society, citizens – taxpayers – have an absolute right to know who’s on the public payroll and how much we’re all paying them.
In Maine, however, a coterie of Democrats led by Senators Lisa Marrache and Libby Mitchell have decided that their allegiance to the State Employees Union supercedes their obligations to the citizens of Maine. And so they want to make the names of state employees confidential insofar as it relates to their salary and benefits. Under their bill, citizens wanting this information would have to go to the extraordinary trouble of filing a FOIA request.
Their actions show a spectacular contempt for the people of Maine. And Senator Marrache demonstrated her personal contempt in an op-ed piece she published yesterday in the Kennebec Journal.
Senator Marrached stated that ‘the current practice of printing all public servants’ names . . . . is voyeuristic, sleazy and feeds into witch hunts.‘
Let me see if I understand this correctly. Citizens who want to know who’s on the payroll and how much we’re paying them are sleazy and voyeuristic.
Senator Marrache should add ‘smear artist’ to her other credentials.
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