Over at Dirigo Blue, the ever diligent Gerald Weinand secured a leaked memo from Governor Lepage's Communications Director, Dan Demeritt. The memo contains many illegal and/or unseemly comments.

The most controversial line from Dan’s email is this one: "Once we take office, Paul will put 11,000 bureaucrats to work getting Republicans elected." Ooof. 

This comment is obviously wrong for many reasons. First, it is illegal for state employees to be engaged in partisan activities during their work day. Nor is it legal to intimidate or coerce state employees into supporting a candidate or Party. The comment also is a smack in the face to state employees, as if to say they will be pawns for the new administration. Why on earth would Demeritt and LePage think for one second that state employees would support the administration – the same people that want to send 2,000 of them to the unemployment line?

Dan Demeritt has told the press his comments are not what they seem. His arguments are too bogus to repeat here.

Also concerning about the memo was Dan's suggestion that the LePage administration should get Senator Snowe's staff "involved in increasing the profile of our people." Snowe has denied any knowledge of such a scheme.

The memo makes one thing completely clear: the LePage administration is intent on using every resource to build power for Republicans and maintain control of the state, even going so far as to suggest illegal activities. So much for all that "people above politics" stuff.

But I was much more concerned about another section of the memo. In the second page of the email, Demeritt provides an example of the kind of positive press the administration wants to create for Republican incumbents. He references the administration's plan to give back $259 million to the hospitals in Maine. $259 million taxpayer dollars! Demeritt seems almost giddy when he writes "I like the visual of Garret Mason standing outside Central Maine Medical Center with a plywood-sized check in his hand signed by Paul LePage for $40 Million Dollars."

Is this payback of the hospitals simply a gimmick for Republican incumbents? 

I was already suspicious when LePage nominated the lobbyist for the Maine Hospital Association, Mary Mayhew, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. There was quite a pay cut for her. As a lobbyist for the hospitals she was raking in $244,000 per year. As the DHHS director, she will be making just a tad over $100,000. Something ain’t right.

My suspicions grew when I saw the LePage administration rush to pay this money to the hospitals with no strings attached. No accounting for the profitability of the hospitals on the receiving end of this money. No effort to secure language guaranteeing the money will be used to hire or retain staff. No effort to force hospitals to provide charity care to the uninsured or underinsured. No effort to hold hospitals accountable to quality standards. No effort to ask hospitals for transparency in their pricing. None of it.

Just a few months ago, Central Maine Medical Center announced they were eliminating 45 open positions, laying off 35 more employees, and even cutting the vacations of staff. Central Maine Medical Center received $920 million in taxpayer dollars over the past 3 years. Where is the transparency? The accountability? And this is the hospital where Dan is looking forward to having his Publisher's Clearinghouse moment with a big ply-wood check.

I will remind the readers that many hospitals in the state are supposed "non-profits." They pay no taxes on their profits or their property. Their non-profit status has been guaranteed by an unwritten and unenforceable social contract: the hospitals pay no taxes and in exchange they provide a valuable community service. But all too often, these hospital corporations have grown in size and stature and left behind the social agreements that leave them free from any tax burden. Any poor or uninsured person that has visited the emergency room of their local, non-profit hospital has likely faced the diligent bill collectors who haunt their post-visit recuperation.

And in a time when public education will face the axe, as will government services of every stripe, why the rush to gush $259 million into hospitals?  Thanks to Dan Demeritt, now we know the answer to that question:  pure political gain.

For more information about the big hospital payback, read Greg Kesich’s piece in this week’s Portland Press Herald: Big Hospitals are the winners in state spending priorities.