The Lakes Region’s two members on the Maine Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee are not of one mind on the committee’s recent vote to subpoena two key gubernatorial staffers in an ongoing probe of Gov. Paul LePage.

On Oct. 15, the motion to subpoena the staffers – senior aid Aaron Chadbourne and attorney Cynthia Montgomery – came from state Sen. Bill Diamond, a Windham Democrat. Diamond’s motion prevailed, and was opposed by three committee members, including Rep. Michael McClellan, a Republican who represents parts of Raymond and Casco.

Citing pending federal litigation, Montgomery and Chadbourne had declined an invitation to attend the Oct. 15 public hearing and answer questions about their involvement in the Good Will-Hinckley affair, in which LePage is said to have threatened to withhold $530,000 from the Fairfield charter school organization if it hired House Speaker Mark Eves, a Democrat, as its president. Instead, they offered to answer written responses to written questions from the oversight committee. The subpoena set in motion by Diamond compels the staffers to attend the 12-member committee’s next hearing, on Nov. 12.

Diamond and McClellan’s votes reflect their divergent opinions on the Good Will-Hinckley case, which was formally investigated by the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability (OPEGA) after the committee voted in favor of an investigation in August, and could potentially lead to impeachment proceedings in the Legislature. In Diamond’s view, it’s not yet clear whether LePage’s actions are grounds for impeachment, and the committee’s role is to obtain as much relevant information as possible.

“At this point everyone agrees that he did use the threat of withholding funds in order to get Eves fired,” Diamond said. “The report shows he used his influence. That’s not a question. The question is, who else is involved, to what degree did the governor use his influence, and what role did these people play in that? Our whole purpose is, we’re not judgmental, we’re not going to come to a conclusion. We’re just going to get all the information and turn it over to the media and the public. Our job is to find out what happened and tell the public what happened.”

“Who else was involved and to what degree?” Diamond added. “If it was a threat, to what degree was it? Did it go beyond just the money?”

For McClellan, the OPEGA investigation did not reveal any “smoking guns.”

“There just didn’t seem to be anything there in terms of criminal or impeachable actions or offenses,” McClellan said. “Certainly boorish behavior is not what we expect, but there’s a lot of that in Augusta from many of us.”

“Where we’re going doesn’t seem to suggest to me that this is an impeachable offense from what I’ve seen to this point,” he added. “My takeaway is that all three sides probably wish they had done things better – the governor’s office, the speaker and Good Will-Hinckley’s board.”

Diamond said the subpoenas were necessary because written interviews “pale in comparison to the advantage of actually talking to people.

“That’s not even close to being sufficient because the questioning process of one question and one answer always generates another question for clarification purposes,” he said. “We need to have more information from those who were close to the governor to verify and to clarify to see what the governor’s side of the whole thing is.”

McClellan said he respected Diamond’s vote for the subpoena, although he thinks it’s unnecessary.

“Bill is just looking to make sure it’s very transparent and every rock is turned over,” he said. “What I’ve seen to this point doesn’t suggest to me we’re going to find anything under that rock – that’s why I voted no.”

Since January, McClellan has been serving his first stint on the Government Oversight Committee, saying that his role is to “act as part of a balanced team considering a variety of issues that are important to Maine citizens.”

Diamond has served on the committee during four terms, and participated in three OPEGA investigations, including the 2011 investigation of the Maine Turnpike Authority that resulted in the 20-month imprisonment of the former authority director, Paul Violette, for stealing public funds. This year’s investigation has been even more sensational than the turnpike affair, Diamond said.

“This probably, no doubt, is the most dramatic investigation and widespread investigation that we’ve done because it includes the governor,” he said. “Because of the potential of this investigation and the outcome, it really is unique – no question.”

Diamond said his background as the publisher of The Suburban News from 1992-2003 informed his approach to the government oversight committee. Current Publishing, owner of the Lakes Region Weekly, bought The Suburban News in 2003.

“If you ask somebody some questions and they just decline to answer, that raises some concern,” he said. “Why would they decline to answer? After 11 years in the newspaper business, you get that sense when you ask questions that are simply trying to gather information and someone declines – that’s the old newspaper person in you that says, ‘Now I’m even more curious about what are you not wanting to share with us?’”

As part of his approach, Diamond said he likes to give participants a chance before slapping a subpoena.

“We try to approach this thing as gentle as possible at first, we invite people to come,” he said. “If they refuse to come in that’s always an option for us. We try not to use the big gun if we don’t have to.”

Adrienne Bennett, spokeswoman for the governor, characterized the committee’s resort to the “big guns” as political theater.

“If there are further questions, why not ask them now before the meeting and let the public know what those questions are?” she said. “It’s a bit of a stunt on behalf of some legislators, when we could have those questions answered prior to the meeting if they would just submit those questions.”