Maine CDC shredding case headed to AG's office
A legislative oversight committee voted unanimously Wednesday to send a letter to the Maine Attorney General’s office asking it to review information suggesting state Center for Disease Control officials violated the Maine Freedom of Access Act or tried to frustrate legal intention by ordering documents destroyed.
The Sun Journal said members of the Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee voted to send the letter to let the AG’s office know they’ve received information that suggests CDC officials may have shredded documents, and to ask the AG to review the information and consider whether to investigate it.
The allegations of wrongdoing emerged last spring when Sharon Leahy-Lind, the director at the time of the CDC’s Division of Local Public Health, filed a harassment complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission. She subsequently filed a whistle-blower lawsuit. She said her bosses at the CDC told her to shred public documents related to grant funding for the Healthy Maine Partnerships program, and when she refused, she was harassed.
The newspaper noted that shredding allegations, a report by the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability and official testimony related to the incident have been public for months, but the Government Oversight Committee’s letter will serve as the formal notification to the state’s top law-enforcement agency. It is unclear, however, how much weight the letter will carry with the AG’s office, the newspaper wrote.
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