An amendment proposed by the LePage administration in an emergency budget last year changed the job of director at the Bureau of Unemployment Compensation from civil servant to political appointee, making Maine the only state in the Northeast to take the step of politicizing that post.

A top Maine Democratic lawmaker said last week that LePage orchestrated the controversial reclassification at the Department of Labor in an effort to wrest greater control over hearing officers who decide appeals of unemployment claims. LePage last week called the process “one-sided” against business, citing “hundreds and hundreds” of complaints of “unfair” hearings.

The Joint Standing Committee on Labor, Commerce, Research and Economic Development, including two Republicans who sided with committee Democrats, voted 7-4 against the administration’s original proposal on the job change.

That proposal was later modified before being voted out of the Joint Standing Committee on Appropriations and Financial Affairs on a 7-6 tally in favor. A brokered amendment grandfathered current director Laura Boyett in that spot until she steps down. The change to that job description was included in an emergency budget that was enacted on April 24, 2012.

That means Boyett’s successor will be picked by the sitting governor at the time of Boyett’s departure. She has held that job for the past decade.

Lawmakers who spoke to the Sun Journal on the subject had foggy memories of the job reclassification, and some didn’t remember that it had happened at all.

Assistant Senate Majority Leader Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, said this week there has been a movement within the administration to oust Boyett because she hasn’t exerted her influence over the Office of Administrative Hearings, which she oversees, to be more business-friendly.

Jackson served as the ranking minority member of the Labor Committee last session when the administration’s proposal came before his committee.

A Sun Journal investigation cited sources in a report two weeks ago that LePage had called administrative hearing officers to a mandatory March 21 luncheon at the Blaine House and scolded them for finding too many unemployment-benefit appeals cases in favor of workers. They were told they were doing their jobs poorly, sources said. Afterward, they said they felt abused, harassed and bullied by the governor.

“Just like with these hearing officers now, you don’t want people in those positions subject to the whims of any governor,” Jackson said in an interview with the Sun Journal.

“They haven’t been able to put that type of pressure on Boyett to do what they want,” he said. “That’s the thing that’s great about her. She does the job the way that she feels the federal government tells her it has to be done.”

Jackson said Boyett’s independence has helped keep Maine’s unemployment trust fund one of the “most stable in the country,” unlike many states that had to borrow from the federal government.

Peter Steele, director of communications for LePage, said the administration’s actions last year were simply an effort to achieve consistency within the Maine Department of Labor where all bureau directors — except Boyett — are political appointees and have been since before LePage took office.

According to George Wentworth, senior staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project in New York, last year’s change in the classification to Boyett’s job from classified to unclassified will make Maine the only state in the Northeast with a politically appointed director of unemployment compensation.

Jackson said LePage is trying to influence outcomes at the administrative appeals level from the top.

“He’s barking up the wrong tree on that,” Jackson said. “I guess the only way he’ll be happy is if there’s 100 percent of workers not winning their appeals.”

LePage has denied allegations that he sought to skew claims outcomes. He said he called the March 21 meeting to address the complaints he and the commissioner at the Department of Labor had been receiving.

LePage recently created a blue ribbon commission to “ensure Maine’s Unemployment Insurance system provides benefits for workers who are rightly entitled to them, while ensuring businesses are not charged when they appropriately let employees go. Additionally, the commission will review the rules and laws governing the system to assure Mainers they are consistently applied,” he said this week in a written statement. He named the commission’s co-chairmen on Tuesday.

They are Daniel Wathen, who served for two decades on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, half of that time as chief justice, and George Jabar, a Waterville lawyer who serves as a commissioner in Kennebec County government.

Maine House Speaker Mark Eves, a Democrat, called the timing of LePage’s announcement “suspicious.” He said, “We need an independent review to get to the bottom of what happened at the Blaine House.”

On Friday, a legislative committee voted to probe further into allegations that LePage pressured hearing officers to be more business-friendly.

The Government Oversight Committee directed its staff, the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability, to learn more about two existing inquiries into the March 21 luncheon, but stopped short of launching an investigation of its own.

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State Politics Editor Scott Thistle contributed to this report.