Last March, Maine Gov. Paul LePage ordered the removal of the History of Labor in Maine mural from the lobby of the Maine Department of Labor. Judy Taylor had been commissioned in late 2007 to create and install the mural, which she did the following year.
LePage also ordered then names of eight conference rooms be changed, rooms named after former Labor Secretary Frances Perkins and labor leader César Chávez.
The original reason that was given for LePage's order - that the mural was to pro-worker - was later changed to the claim that money from Maine's Unemployment Insurance office was misused to pay for the mural.
Last week, Gov. Paul LePage granted an exclusive interview to Jon Chrisos of FOX23-TV out of Portland last week. You can watch it here, beginning at mark 1:02 (my apologies - the embed code is not working).
Chrisos asked Gov. LePage about the History of Labor in Maine Mural, which LePage ordered taken down from the lobby of the Labor Department. Again, LePage repeats his promise that if the money that he thinks was inappropriately to pay for the mural is repaid, he will return it:
CHRISOS: I know you've called this a distraction, so let's get this out of the way - the Labor Mural - did you think it would blow up into such an issue that it became?
LEPAGE: I don't know, I never thought about it. It's irrelevant in my mind. The mural can go right back up tomorrow if they pay the money that was used from the unemployment funds - if the money is paid back, they can put it any place they want, any time they want. But they took money from funds that were not appropriate.
CHRISOS: So you had it taken down, money or the message of the mural, or some of both?
LEPAGE: The message - I don't have a message, a bad message about the mural. Matter of fact, I'm very, very compassionate and feel passion for the labor unions. I'm compassionate about labor unions.
I think - union members have never been a problem in my mind. Union bosses are. Union bosses take advantage of people, and they collect all this money and they put it into political campaigns instead of putting it into the product that they give us to work with. And to me, if they put as much emphasis on the quality of the employee that they hire I think we'd have a perfect utopia.
The money used by the State under the Reed Act, around $22,000, was used appropriately; it was money designated for administrative costs from dispersing unemployment benefits. In fact, the US Department of Labor has demanded that the mural be reinstalled or the Reed Act funds returned.
Surely unions across the nation could raise $25,000, the ransom demanded by Gov. LePage with a little extra to cover costs reinstalling the mural.
Isn't it time to call LePage on his bluff?