Maine Gov. LePage (R)
The Paul LePage situation has quickly ramped up to ludicrous speed. As you may know, Maine's Republican governor
threatened to cut off half a million dollars worth of funding for a charter school for at-risk youth if they didn't rescind an offer they made to the state House speaker (Democrat Mark Eves) to serve as their president. The school promptly buckled, Eves cried foul, and LePage ... well,
he admitted it all!
"Yeah, I did," he said. "If I could, I would. Absolutely. Why wouldn’t I? Tell me why I wouldn’t take the taxpayer money, to prevent somebody to go into a school and destroy it. Because (Eves’) heart’s not into doing the right thing for Maine people."
So lawmakers, of course,
just launched an investigation, and you know they mean it: One of those leading the call for an inquiry
is a Republican state senator.
LePage, though, insists that the legislature's Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability doesn't have the constitutional authority to dig into his actions, so you know he's going to make this as difficult as possible. But his obstinacy scarcely matters. Legislators most certainly are empowered to conduct an investigation to determine whether LePage should be impeached, which is exactly where all this could wind up.