Maine’s treasurer and governor are disagreeing about the sale of $64 million in bonds.
In November voters approved the sale of the bonds for transportation projects, land conservation, public drinking water systems and wastewater treatment facilities.
Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican, said he does not want to sell the bonds until the state’s financial condition improves, the Associated Press reported.
In November’s election Democrats took control of the state’s House of Representatives and Senate. The two chambers together elect the treasurer. On Jan. 7 Democrat Neria Douglass, the former state auditor, was sworn in as the new treasurer.
Douglass said that she believed Le-Page had the duty to allow the bonds to be sold.
“I do know that he’s quite strong-willed so that if that doesn’t work, there are opportunities that I’m sure may be newsworthy at the time,” Douglass told a reporter for WCSH television news. “I think that he has a ministerial duty to issue those bonds.”
Douglass told WCSH that she planned to be different from her predecessor, Bruce Poliquin. He politicized the job by, among other things, talking about pension reform, she told WCSH.
