A bill before the Maine Legislature would make private intraparty meetings of lawmakers open to the public, which its sponsor says will increase transparency and provide more insight into how lawmakers arrive at decisions.

The proposal would give the public access to gatherings of three or more lawmakers of the same party by adding legislative caucuses to the list of meetings subject to Maine’s Freedom of Access Act.

Maine Sen. Rick Bennett Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

The act already protects public access to meetings of the full Legislature and its bipartisan committees, as well as to local school board and city council meetings. The same law also mandates that records belonging to public agencies and officials are public.

“LD 12 will add a new level of transparency to the legislative process,”  Sen. Rick Bennett, R-Oxford, the bill’s sponsor, said during a public hearing Wednesday. “It will ensure the public can see how decisions are made, who is influencing those decisions and the reasoning behind our policies or laws.”

It’s common for lawmakers to meet in closed-door caucuses to discuss strategy or hold negotiations, but such meetings also have been criticized as a tool for subverting public access laws to conduct legislative business.

In one instance last year, Democrats came under fire for a private caucus in which committee members were briefed by an official from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives while considering several firearms measures. Republicans criticized the move, saying the meeting shouldn’t have been held in private.

The Maine Press Association submitted written testimony in support of Bennett’s bill, and no one testified against it. But changing the law could be complicated, and it’s unclear how much support the proposal will have among lawmakers. The bill does not list any co-sponsors.

Lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee asked Bennett how the bill could affect legislative working papers that are now confidential under state law, and whether discussions around a party’s political strategy would be open to the public.

Bennett said his intent is not to disturb the ability of lawmakers to solicit input under the working papers exemption as they develop a bill, but he said that legislative decisions should not be made in private.

“People making real decisions behind closed doors, that ought not to be done and there doesn’t seem to be a means of addressing that through social or cultural change,” he said.

Bennett  said he understands that political strategy is “not, strictly speaking, the public’s business.”

“(But) if we’re doing policy work and making decisions, sharing information like three selectmen sitting around a diner table having a conversation about a public matter, which is against the law, I’d like to see those kinds of conversations not rendered unless there is public access,” he said.

The Maine Press Association, which includes 44 newspapers and digital news sites across the state, said negotiations and conversations that take place behind closed doors violate the principles of transparency.

“Private caucus meetings prevent freedom of access, and constituents are left out of the process,” the association said in its written testimony. “That subverts the very nature of our participatory democracy.”

Bennett, who has served on and off in either the Senate or House of Representatives since 1990, said he sees more and more work and decision-making being done in caucuses. “I know there are reasons for that and we all can surmise what they are with growing levels of partisanship and toxicity,” he said. “I believe we need an antidote to this.”

The committee on Wednesday also heard a proposal from Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, that would require agencies and officials to fulfill Freedom of Access Act requests for public records within 30 days. The bill, LD 152, would update current law, which requires agencies to fulfill requests “within a reasonable time.”

Libby has two Democratic co-sponsors on the bill, but it has also been met with opposition from numerous municipalities, schools and state agencies that say they don’t have the resources to work within a 30-day time constraint when fulfilling records requests, many of which can be broad and complicated.

Libby, meanwhile, said she has heard from constituents who are frustrated by the amount of time it can take to fulfill a request. In one example, the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition said in written testimony that it is still waiting for data requested from the state medical examiner’s office in 2023 to better understand a rise in deaths among people on probation.

“This bill is essential,” said Jan Collins, the coalition’s assistant director. “Lifesaving public policy decisions are wholly dependent on information government offices collect. We should be able to access it in a timely manner.”