AG: Treasurer should led 3rd party handle business
PORTLAND, Maine—The state treasurer shouldn't be engaged in active management of a business and shouldn't appear before governmental bodies on behalf of entities he owns, Maine Attorney General William Schneider said Friday.
Schneider issued an advisory opinion at the request of a state lawmaker who questioned whether Treasurer Bruce Poliquin's business dealings ran afoul of the Maine Constitution, which forbids the treasurer from engaging in business activities while in office.
Poliquin is owner of the Popham Beach Club, a private club, and is listed as the "clerk and registered agent" of Dirigo Holdings LLC, which markets condominiums in Phippsburg. Dirigo Holdings hoped to develop a 183-property with a 69-unit condominium complex valued $17.3 million.
Schneider suggested the treasurer may have crossed the line.
"During the treasurer's term in office, he should take steps to disassociate himself from the active management of any of the entities in which he is invested and any entities in which he is the sole owner or principle or agent. Furthermore, he should not appear before any governmental bodies on behalf of entities that he owns," Schneider said.
Poliquin didn't return a message left with his office on Friday.
In requesting the advisory opinion, Rep. Mark Dion cited news reports about Poliquin's application for an amended business license to allow his beach club to host catered functions year-round.
In his opinion, Schneider said the Maine courts have never addressed the issue, so "it is difficult to predict how a court would address the question before us."
But he noted a 1978 opinion written by then-Deputy Attorney General Donald Alexander, now a justice on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, who concluded that both state law and the constitution prohibited the treasurer from engaging in any other business or profession while in office.
Schneider said personal ownership of stocks and bonds shouldn't pose a problem because neither the constitution nor state law requires divestiture. But there's no history or precedent identifying business ventures that would be acceptable under the constitution, he wrote.
"Any activities related to the active management of stock or other ownership interest should be handled by third persons in the absence of any authority suggesting that such activities are acceptable when undertaken directly," Schneider wrote.
Poliquin is a Republican. Dion, a Democrat from Portland, said the attorney general's language provides clear guidance to Poliquin. "He has to create legal firewalls that completely isolate himself from his business interests if he wants to continue as treasurer," Dion said.
