Jon Amirault, tax collector for the town of Somerville, has engaged a current and a former member of the Somerville Municipal Broadband Board in a lawsuit over the members’ alleged violation of the Maine Freedom of Access Act.
In the complaint, filed at Lincoln County Superior Court on June 5, Amirault alleges that Somerville Municipal Broadband Board Chair Douglas Shartzer and former board Chair Sharon Reishus failed to provide records he had requested this spring relating to the town-owned broadband internet network.
In an initial response to the complaint, filed by Somerville town attorney Trevor Brice on June 30, Shartzer and Reishus denied the allegations. Brice stated the two had complied fully with Amirault’s FOAA request.
Shartzer and Reishus, who are named in the suit in their official capacity as members of the Somerville Municipal Broadband Board, are represented in the case by Brice, who works for the Lewiston-based firm Skelton, Taintor & Abbott.
Amirault is representing himself.
The case deals with a FOAA request that Amirault initiated on May 3 of this year. In an email sent that day to the Somerville town clerk email address, Amirault requested access to all public records related to “the long-term financial planning, maintenance strategy, and contractual obligations related to the town of Somerville’s municipal broadband network.”
Somerville Select Board Chair Willard Pierpont forwarded that email to Reishus on May 5, according to court filings. Somerville was in between town clerks at the time following the resignation of former Town Clerk Russell Gates at the end of April, according to Shartzer.
In the email, which was included in court filings, Amirault said he wanted to determine whether the town had a plan in place for long-term financial obligations, maintenance, and equipment replacement required to keep the broadband network running in the coming decades.
Documents he requested included projections of the cost required to sustain the system over a 20-year period, budgeting and projections for future equipment replacement, communications among broadband board members and vendors about long-term ownership plans, and signed agreements between the town and vendors related to the network, among others, according to the court documents.
Amirault identified himself in that email and in court filings as both the Somerville tax collector and a resident of the town.
Shartzer shared a digital folder with Amirault on May 12 that he said in a phone interview on Sunday, July 20 contained what Amirault had requested and more.
“We gave him everything,” Shartzer said. “Every file that the town had in its shared drive.”
In a May 6 email to Somerville Select Board Chair Willard Pierpont, Reishus called the FOAA request from a town official “unusual,” according to court filings. She said Amirault had access to all broadband-related files through his position, as he was a town official with access to Somerville’s network and files.
“In theory, anyone, whether a resident or not, can FOAA any government document, which is of course fine, but it is unusual (and unnecessary) to file a FOAA request if he already has access to town files by virtue of his position,” she wrote in the email, included in the court filings.
In an email sent on June 9 to Pierpont, Reishus asked Pierpont to tell Amirault that the town would gather “whatever information is available” and send it to him within 30 days.
“The long-term planning for using the capital reserve to maintain the fiber system is something the SMBB intends to take up once the system is finished construction and all advanced subscribers have been connected,” she wrote. “That is our priority for another month, and then the board can turn its time and energy to long term issues, including budgeting for component replacements.”
However, in the suit, Amirault said it was not “legally plausible” that the broadband board did not yet have more documents referencing long-term planning.
“Defendants Sharon Reishus and Douglas Shartzer, both members of the Somerville Municipal Broadband Board, acknowledged the existence of relevant records but failed to provide them, issue legally sufficient denials, or fulfill their obligations as custodians of public records,” Amirault stated in the complaint. “This contradiction is not a misunderstanding. It is either a concealment or an institutional failure so egregious that it defies the most basic standards of public governance and fiduciary competence.”
In the suit, Amirault and counsel for Reishus and Shartzer disagree over whether the defendants or the Somerville Select Board are the true legal “custodians” of the records, with whom responsibility would fall to fulfill Amirault’s FOAA request.
Amirault also said in the complaint and via email that the ultimate delivery of the files – in a “massive, disorganized ZIP file with no index” – was unsatisfactory.
In his complaint, Amirault said the actions of Reishus and Shartzer suggest that more complete documents and planning records do exist but are being withheld.
In the complaint, he seeks to compel a certified search report for such documents. He also seeks reimbursement for filing fees related to the case.
In the defendants’ initial response to the complaint, Brice said Shartzer and Reishus had met the requirements of the Freedom of Access Act by supplying all relevant files. The defendants denied Amirault’s allegation that further records exist and are being concealed, according to the response. Brice also wrote there was no legal requirement that the two must have the documents Amirault said he was still lacking, and that such documents did not exist.
“Defendants have complied with every aspect of Plaintiff’s request … and have certified that the documents requested in this suit do not exist,” Brice wrote in the filing. “The documents requested by Plaintiff are not required to be stored or maintained by Defendants under any statute or law.”
Reached by email on Tuesday, July 22, Amirault declined to comment specifically on the pending litigation.
“I have nothing to say to (The Lincoln County News) until I see some evidence you’re on the side of helping our town,” he wrote in the email.
Reached by email on Tuesday, July 22, Reishus also declined to comment on the pending lawsuit. However, she said the litigation would have “a real cost” for the town and could discourage other residents from stepping forward to be involved in town government.
“The Somerville Municipal Broadband Board members are volunteers who’ve acted transparently and in good faith to serve the public,” Reishus said.
Brice requested the case be dismissed with prejudice, meaning Amirault would be prevented from bringing the same case against the defendants again in Lincoln County Superior Court.
A preliminary status hearing for the case is set for 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, July 24 at the Lincoln County Courthouse in Wiscasset.
