Windham’s legislative delegation is openly criticizing the Maine Department of Corrections for not seeking community feedback on its new proposal to construct a 72-bed women’s re-entry facility on River Road.

On Feb. 9, the department’s civil engineer, Tony Panciocco, presented the Windham Planning Board a sketch plan for the $10 million, 24,000-square-foot building to be located on prison property. According to state Sen. Bill Diamond, the subsequent story in Feb. 20’s Lakes Region Weekly was the first he had heard of the project. Neither Rep. Mark Bryant nor Rep. Patrick Corey were previously aware of the proposal either.

“Nobody knew about this,” Diamond said. “It’s just been kind of pushed along quietly right under the radar.”

In a Feb. 20 open letter to Commissioner Joseph Patrick, Diamond, Bryant and Corey wrote that the department’s “communication and consideration for local citizens” have “been seriously lacking.” Diamond and Bryant are Democrats; Corey is a Republican.

“Windham citizens should have been notified of this project and been allowed to present their input as well in advance of the final decision regarding this construction,” they wrote. “Unfortunately this has not happened.”

In an email responding to the delegation’s concerns, Gary LaPlante, the department’s director of operations, said he had briefed the Legislature’s Criminal Justice and Appropriations committees, as well as the Maine Correctional Center’s Board of Visitors, an oversight and advisory committee made up of citizens.

“I want to apologize for not making direct contact prior to this,” he said. “I have no excuse, it was an oversight that will not be repeated.”

In response to the complaints, the department has scheduled public input sessions on the re-entry facility on March 18, 21 and 28. The March 18 meeting will be held from 6-8 p.m. at the Oak Haven training center on High Street, across from the Maine Correctional Center. The times and locations of the two follow-up meetings have not yet been determined.

To Bryant, who said he was “blindsided” by news of the proposal, the department should have notified the delegation after the November elections, at the latest.

“When I did talk to Mr. LaPlante, he said that basically, he didn’t contact us, being the legislative delegation, because there was an election and we weren’t elected at the time,” Bryant said. “If that’s true, that means he was already in the planning process in November.”

“He really should have briefed the sitting legislators out of respect and then briefed us when we came in,” Bryant added. “There’s been almost four months that the department could have done that.”

Deputy Commissioner Jodi Breton said the department had not meant to exclude the Windham delegation.

“We briefed the Criminal Justice committee and we briefed Appropriations,” Breton said. “It wasn’t that we meant not to include them, it’s just that they weren’t on the committees.”

“In no way did we mean to slight them,” Breton added.

Members of the delegation said they had not received complaints from their constituents about the proposed re-entry facility. At the very least, Corey said, Windham residents should have a choice to offer public comment on the proposal.

“I don’t know that the constituents totally know about it,” Corey said. “It might be an OK plan, it’s just that there hasn’t been a great deal of community input yet. They might like it when they hear about it.”

In his email to the delegation, LaPlante also mentioned that Raelene Loura, a member of the Maine Correctional Center’s five-person Board of Visitors, had agreed to “advise the neighborhood” about the proposed re-entry facility.

Bryant said he thought LaPlante, who assumed the title of director of operations last year, was trying to deflect responsibility for the situation.

“To throw it onto a person on the board of visitors – I thought that was kind of weak,” Bryant said. “Either its naivete or it’s just straight-up arrogance. I don’t really know.”

In an interview, LaPlante said his intention was to note that Loura was going to generally share information about the project, not go door-knocking.

“Raelene lives in that neighborhood and said that she would share that information,” LaPlante said. “That was not intended to represent the fact that she was going door to door, but that she was aware of it and she was going to share it. There was no intent to have that represent the fact that she was going to go door to door.”

Last winter, the department unsuccessfully sought approval from the state Legislature and Gov. Paul LePage to build a new $173 million facility to replace the Windham prison with a new one on the 220 acres the department owns along River and Mallison Falls roads in South Windham. In the letter, the delegation also criticized the department’s handling of that proposal.

“This plan by (the Department of Corrections) follows a recent attempt just a year ago to build a new prison on the (Maine Correctional Center) property in Windham and that effort also lacked appropriate opportunities for public discussion, with the exception of one meeting held very late in the process, resulting in concerns about (Department of Corrections) communication policies,” they wrote.

Unlike last year’s proposed project, the women’s re-entry facility does not require a bond issue or legislative approval, as it is likely to be financed by the department’s capital fund. To Diamond, that might explain the relative lack of communication.

“I think they just thought, ‘Look, this is our land, we don’t need to get any approval for funds, so we are just going to go forward on this, totally leaving out the community’ – a major faux pas on their part,” he said.

According to Fitzpatrick, the department will hold several public input sessions in Windham in the near future.

“The way we do business is very up front,” Fitzpatrick said. “We will never work around people and behind people.”