BANGOR (AP) – The Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife is proposing new regulations that would require licensed guides to undergo criminal background checks that could result in their losing their licenses.

Under the proposal, all prospective guides and existing guides seeking to renew their licenses could be disqualified if they have criminal convictions on their record, depending on the crime and date of the conviction.

State officials say the rules are meant to protect the public. But guides say the proposal goes too far and is unnecessary.

The department will hold a public hearing on Jan. 24 at the Bangor Civic Center.

As written, the rules would ban those convicted of the most serious felonies, mainly violent crimes, from ever obtaining a license. People convicted of lesser felonies would be ineligible for 10 years, while those convicted of criminal misdemeanors – ranging from marijuana possession to speeding 30 mph or more over the speed limit – would be barred for three years.

Maine has some 4,000 licensed guides who are entrusted to care for sportsmen, tourists and occasional groups of children in the Maine backcountry, often in isolated and potentially dangerous situations. Those people, state officials said, deserve assurances that their guide doesn’t have a violent past.

“We want to be proactive instead of reactive,” said Maine Warden Service Sgt. Mark Warren, who heads the state’s Advisory Board for the Licensing of Guides. “Do we give someone a license and have them be a child molester and go out with a group of kids? I’d rather be proactive.”

But some guides said the threshold has been set too low, and that good guides with relatively minor infractions could lose their licenses.

Lorin LeCleire, a master guide with Northeastern Sports-Union River Guide Service in Clifton, said he has no qualms about background checks on guides or denying licenses to violent criminals. But LeCleire dislikes the idea of barring those guilty of minor crimes or some nonviolent felonies, such as white-collar crimes.

“I’d rather see the felony (prohibition) be for violent crimes,” LeCleire said.

The proposal apparently goes further than what the guide licensing board intended.

Warren said the board’s original proposal would have restricted licenses for all felons and anyone convicted of criminal fish and wildlife offenses, such as poaching. It wasn’t intended to include minor criminal violations unrelated to guiding.

Warren said the state attorney general’s office changed the draft document to apply to all Class D and E misdemeanors and that the advisory board and department accepted the attorney general’s legal advice.

Skip Trask, legislative liaison for the Maine Professional Guides Association, said the proposal is unnecessary and possibly violates existing law.

Trask said he has pointed out to Fisheries and Wildlife officials that Maine’s Administrative Procedures and Services code already specifies how and why the state can deny an occupational license.

Those reasons include convictions for any felony as well as for lesser crimes that involve “dishonesty or false statement” or that “directly relate to the trade or occupation for which the license or permit is sought.”

The statute states that convictions will not become an “automatic bar” from licensure. Instead, applicants may attempt to convince the licensing agency that they have been “sufficiently rehabilitated to warrant the public trust.”

“I think they probably have everything they need” in existing law, Trask said.

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Information from: Bangor Daily News, http://www.bangornews.com

AP-ES-01-14-06 1330EST

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