March 29, 2024
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Group’s privacy order spurs friction

HOULTON – A meeting of the Southern Aroostook Development Corp. board of directors quickly soured on Thursday when officials requested that guests at the meeting sign a statement of confidentiality as a condition of attending the meeting.

Chris Anderson, SADC president, told media representatives that they would “be asked politely to leave the meeting” if they did not sign the statement. Reporters from the Houlton Pioneer Times, a local weekly newspaper, and the Bangor Daily News walked out after more than a half-hour of debate about the document. The reporters were the only media present at the meeting.

Anderson said that the statement had been around for “three or four years.”

“We’ve been holding our directors and our marketing team to it,” Anderson said. “We haven’t been holding our guests to it.”

The NEWS reporter noted at the meeting that she had never seen the document before.

SADC works to encourage economic development in the area. Executive Director Jon McLaughlin consistently has affirmed that the corporation is private, but receives some public funding from municipalities and the public is invited to their meetings.

The organization came under fire in January when the Town Council contemplated denying SADC’s $20,000 funding request. Councilor Gerald Adams told SADC that “they had created no new businesses in Houlton” in five years. The council eventually voted to fund the organization. The council has approved $40,000 for SADC in the past two years.

The statement guests were asked to sign said that “any public communication of [SADC’s] activities, written or verbal, must be approved prior to its release.”

Officials said at the meeting that “proprietary information” about possible potential businesses would be discussed and needed to be protected.

“How are we supposed to write articles if we sign a confidentiality statement?” Sarah Berthiaume, a Times reporter asked the board.

“You can report what happened,” Anderson replied, “you just have to run your articles through us first.”

Both Berthiaume and the NEWS reporter refused to sign the document.

“One of the reasons that I started coming to these meetings was to help you out,” Berthiaume said. “We keep hearing from the community, ‘What does SADC do, where does the money go,’ and I wanted to get the word out about what you’re doing.”

The NEWS reporter objected under the state’s Freedom of Access law, stating that the media only reports the facts and that the document would compromise journalistic integrity.

“You can’t print rumors in the newspaper,” Berthiaume said.

Anderson said that SADC had written the confidentiality statement, but refused to say if a lawyer had looked over the document.

Rep. Roger Sherman, who represents nearby Hodgdon, Houlton and Cary Plantation in the Legislature, was a guest at the meeting, and said that he felt uncomfortable in the situation.

“We just spent time in the Legislature revising the Freedom of Access law,” Sherman said. “I understand that you are quasi-private and need to protect proprietary information, but you also receive public funds. There is a gray area there.”

Sherman was referring to LD 1957, which recently was passed on to the Senate. It aims to protect the public, municipalities and other organizations from abuses of the Freedom of Access law.

Anderson told Sherman that “historically, [SADC] had never gone into executive session,” although an agenda item revealed that an executive session was planned at the end of the meeting. No reason was noted for holding the executive session.

Town Manager Peggy Daigle said she felt that SADC would “get negative press” about the meeting, and suggested that the group “restructure their agenda” to accommodate everyone.

McLaughlin did not return phone calls by press time Friday to determine if SADC will continue to insist that guests sign the confidentiality statement.


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