The suggestion last month by City Councilor Kelly Matzen that the Auburn Charter be amended to prohibit felons from holding elective city office is a reminder of the absence of such a provision in most city charters in Maine.

Though just more than half of Maine’s cities, including Auburn and Lewiston, require ouster of a councilor convicted of a serious crime while holding office, it is rare in Maine to legally prohibit candidates with a criminal history from seeking and subsequently holding office.

Matzen’s recent suggestion also calls to mind the realization that there is no felony barrier to the qualification of our elected state officials and also is an occasion to reflect on the experiences of two prominent Androscoggin County public officials who were repeatedly returned to elective office despite their felony convictions.

Frank Foster’s conviction for embezzling $4,500 in bonds and his year long sentence in the state prison in Thomaston might seem like an episode that would spell the end of the line for the 32-year-old Bangor-based attorney, who was also the Penobscot County Committeeman of the Maine Council of Young Republicans. After all, $4,500 in 1941 represented the equivalent of at least 10 times that amount today and word of a felony prison record would be hard to subdue in a state the size of Maine.

Nevertheless, Foster relocated to Mechanic Falls and less than four years after his release from prison was elected to the town council. By 1949, he was its chairman. Though being some 120 miles from his old stomping grounds helped obscure his earlier troubles, revival of his professional career was assisted in part by a fluke in the legal process. Seems that despite the felony record steps had never been taken by the attorney general to suspend his right to practice law, and thus he resumed his career as an attorney without having to apply for reinstatement.

Soon banks, one of which named Foster to its governing board, and real estate agents would be referring their title and closing work to Foster, and he became a pillar in the professional community.

By 1954, Mechanic Falls, Minot and Turner elected Foster to the Legislature where he served four terms, the last ending in 1971. In Augusta, Foster was both popular and respected.

My favorite is his successful sponsorship of a bill that did away for a time with the six inch length requirement for catching trout in brooks and streams. Foster reasoned that so many of the small trout were dying after being hooked and thrown back in – and that larger fish in smaller streams were nearly non-existent – that sportsmen might as well be allowed to keep them. After Foster’s departure from the Legislature, the six inch minimum was reinstated. I wish he were still there!

Foster was killed in a head on auto accident in the town of Poland in 1971.


Louis Jalbert
This state legislator’s felony conviction was attended by greater public attention, one that occurred in 1965, midway through a four decade public career. Jalbert’s offense was obtaining $200 from a constituent in order to bribe a municipal court judge to end a larceny investigation against the constituent’s father.

Jalbert was convicted of both conspiracy to bribe and – since his representation that the judge was amenable to improper influence was untrue – of the further crime of obtaining money by false pretenses.

Six months after he was given a suspended one- to two-year sentence to hard labor at the state prison, Jalbert won renomination by Lewiston Democrats to an 11th term in the Maine House. The Lewiston primary outcome was tantamount to re-election in those days, and the redoubtable Jalbert would go on to win eight more terms in the same position, setting a longevity record unsurpassed to this day.

Support among his State House colleagues was almost as strong as it was among local Lewiston voters, Jalbert maintaining his position as chairman of the prestigious Legislative Research Committee and as a senior member of Appropriations. Just three years after his two-year term of probation was concluded, he would come within two votes of defeating John Martin for Democratic House leader.

Perhaps the best explanation for Jalbert’s extraordinary ability to sustain his authority under adverse conditions came from Jim Reid, the Superior Court Justice that rendered the suspended sentence, who cited his ability to “manipulate people” along with his “unsurpassed” knowledge of state finances as justification for not meting out more severe punishment.

This was the pre-home rule era when city governments had to turn to the Legislature when amending their charters. Jalbert called upon this authority with adroit political effect, sponsoring changes that would give greater benefits to public works and fire department employees, for example.

Jalbert’s support from local voters was also a tribute to his assiduous devotion to the individual needs of his constituents, frequently intervening with state officials about a driver’s license problem here, a liquor or professional licensing matter there or some other regulatory issue. Remarkably, Jalbert went to bat for his constituents not merely with the expectation of being rewarded by their votes but also by a demand for their monetary compensation.

Such was Jalbert’s appeal to the public that he would be afforded simultaneous compensation by both methods. He was, as political analyst Peter Burr once observed, “an ombudsman for a fee.”
Paul Mills, a Farmington attorney, has been the election night analyst on WGME-TV since 1988. His observations on Maine government and politics have been widely published and recognized. He can be reached at 163 Main Street, Farmington, Maine 04938, 207-778-3521, e-mail: [email protected].