Somerville’s tax collector has dropped his lawsuit against two fellow town officials over what he claimed was their withholding of public records related to the town’s new broadband network.
Jon Amirault, who has been Somerville’s tax collector since January and emergency management director for two years, wrote in a letter filed in court Aug. 25 that he wanted his complaint dismissed. He said he worked with the town’s attorney to have his request for records under Maine’s Freedom of Access Act “fulfilled as well it can be.”
A judge agreed to dismiss the case Sept. 5 in a brief, handwritten order, court records show.
Amirault’s complaint, filed June 5 in Lincoln County Superior Court in Wiscasset, alleged the former and current chair of the Somerville Municipal Broadband Board did not comply with Maine’s Freedom of Access Act, known commonly as FOAA, when they responded to his request in May.
Amirault had requested records “related to the long-term maintenance planning, financial forecasting, infrastructure depreciation, and cost modeling beyond year five of the municipal fiber network” from the Somerville Municipal Broadband Board, according to the complaint.
The town has been building a municipally owned fiber network, a $1.6 million project fully paid for with state and federal grants from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and Maine Connectivity Authority, the town’s website says.
And Amirault’s complaint went beyond appealing his fellow town officials’ response to his records request.
He accused Sharon Reishus, the former broadband board chair, and Douglas Shartzer, the current chair and former secretary, of purposely concealing the records — or being so incompetent in their roles that they never did the kind of work on the project that Amirault expected they would have done.
Shartzer and Reishus insisted, both in court filings and in interviews, they provided Amirault with everything he requested. They also said that it seemed the motivation behind the lawsuit was about more than simply access to public records.
Amirault wrote in a recent email to the Morning Sentinel that he got “more or less what (he) was after.” But he said he was still “flabbergasted” that the broadband board has built a multimillion-dollar utility with what he sees as little planning for future maintenance or consideration of depreciation, storm damage or aging-out of technology.
He said he is waiting to hear back about other pending records requests to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and Maine Connectivity Authority.
Amirault, who represented himself, has said he brought the lawsuit in his personal capacity, and his initial records request and subsequent legal filings were done on his own time. But some of his court filings do list his official title as tax collector.
Somerville’s town attorney, Trevor R. Brice, of the Lewiston law firm Skelton Taintor & Abbott, represented Shartzer and Reishus, even though Amirault is also a town official.
Shartzer said previously he had to convince Brice to represent him and Reishus, in part by threatening the select board with his own lawsuit against the town if it failed to provide its officials with legal representation.
