Cross posted at Dirigo Blue
In his latest budget proposal, Gov. Paul LePage has added cutting $3.9 million that the State provides to the Maine Public Broadcasting Network (MPBN). This is made through the University of Maine System, under 20-A MRSA §852.3..
MPBN is the only statewide news network.
The amount proposed to be cut is all that the State had been budgeted to provide to MPBN, that is, it would be zeroed out (see page 425 of Gov. LePage's original Proposed Budget issued 11 February 2011).
Last August, on a campaign train trip from Rockland to Brunswick, Susan Sharon, the Deputy News Director at MPBN, asked then candidate LePage this innocuous question:
Susan Sharon: "Can you just give some examples of the DEP putting companies out of business?"
Paul LePage: "Downeast Peat. The peat fire-powered plant. The state of Maine made me do a three-month buffalo study. Did you hear what I said? Buffalo study. The next spring, they decided that they still didn't want this project to be built so they had us go out and count black flies. two months counting black flies. That tells me that the attitude of the regulatory agency was very adversarial to that project."
Except of course, the State did no such thing. LePage made the entire thing up. It later surfaced that he had made this bogus claim before; watch the video here.
The following month, after news that LePage and his wife Ann had purchased a house in Florida in a scheme to obtain in-state tuition for two of the children attending college there, AJ Higgins, the State House Bureau Chief for MPBN, asked LePage about it, which led to this:
Later that same day, LePage confronted another MPBN reporter, Josie Huang, who simply followed up on Higgins' initial question:
Two weeks later, talking to another MPBN reporter, this time Jennifer Rooks, LePage said he was "about ready to punch AJ Higgins":
Well, he's had to wait more than seven months, but it seems that Gov. LePage will try to punch the entire staff at Maine Public Broadcasting, because they simply do their jobs, and do so very well indeed.
What can you do?
If you live in Maine, there is an online PETITION calling for Gov. LePage to restore all the funding originally proposed for MPBN. If you are from away, consider contributing to MPBN here.