Allegations that Gov. Paul LePage injected partisanship into Maine’s unemployment compensation appeal process have been met with the predictable public-relations response from his spokespeople:

It’s “political,” they have said. The governor’s opponents initiated this “attack” meant to distract the public from more important issues, they said. The hearing officers, meanwhile, are described as “disgruntled employees” who are simply not used to being “managed.”

Sorry, but the governor and his press people are wrong on all counts. Here’s why:

The first report we received about the March 21 meeting at the center of this controversy came from a person entirely outside the political spectrum in Maine.

It may be hard for the governor’s people to believe, but not everyone in Maine is a political operative. Most people go about their daily routine with only modest interest in the latest machinations in Augusta.

The person who approached us was one of those people. That person had heard from another person that something fishy was happening in the Labor Department and it involved a recent meeting with the governor at the Blaine House.

So, we started making telephone calls, lots of telephone calls, in a widening circle around that department.

And it was like pulling teeth. We knew this involved the hearing officers, the people who decide unemployment claim disputes between employees and employers, but they were afraid to talk for fear of losing their jobs.

By teasing out bits and pieces here and there, double checking accounts against each other and then rechecking those accounts, we were finally able to establish what they were so “disgruntled” about.

The same reason came up time and time again: The hearing officers felt the governor was pressuring them to decide fewer cases in favor of employees.

The actual statistics here may surprise you: Employers win 70 percent of the cases at the hearing examiner level in Maine and have done so for at least the last decade. Employers win about 90 percent of the cases that go to the next level of appeal.

Several days after our story, records obtained through a FOAA request by the Portland Press Herald for Department of Labor emails confirmed what we had reported: The hearing examiners felt the governor was putting his political thumb on what is supposed to be a non-political process.

Emails sent before the meeting show that the hearing officers seemed open-minded about the upcoming meeting with the governor.

“It has been tense but I’m hoping that this event will turn out to be an opportunity for increased understanding of what we do and the whys behind our work, and for us; better understanding of the Administration’s focus and objectives …. An exchange of ideas and discussion,” wrote Laura Boyette, director of the Bureau of Unemployment Compensation, several weeks before the meeting.

But the tone of the emails abruptly changed after the meeting:

“It’s hard to describe how painful this is, and how totally shocked I am,” Linda Rogers-Tomer, chief hearing officer, wrote to Boyette after the meeting

Another hearing officer wrote to Rogers-Tomer:

“In the time I’ve been doing this work, I’ve never seen anything like it, from either end of the political spectrum. For purposes of keeping political pressures/bias out of quasi-judicial process within the Maine Department of Labor, these are dark times.”

Note that none of the hearing officers sent their emails to newspapers or politicians. Their anguish after the meeting with the governor seems to have been entirely contained within the department, shared only with their superiors and revealed only through legal requests by newspapers.

The governor’s spokesman has described the hearing officers as “disgruntled employees” who are simply not used to being “managed.”

Which may speak volumes about the disconnect between the governor and the hearing officers.

The examiners believe they should be insulated from the political will of the various politicians and political appointees who pass through the Statehouse. They feel as if they are judges simply trying to apply rules to complex cases.

To the governor and the people around him, the hearing examiners are uncooperative employees who should yield to the governor’s “management.”

The governor comes from the private sector, where the working definition of “management” too often means simply doing what the boss says.

Unfortunately, that’s the message the hearing officers heard at that meeting.

Their role — and independence from the governor — must be reinforced before unemployed workers can have complete faith in the fairness of the appeals process.

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