He also does not see a perception problem when turnpike executives accept food or drinks from consultants: “Going out to dinner with somebody is not going to be sufficient to keep someone here.”
Violette is 51, trim, with short gray hair and glasses. A former Democratic state Senate majority leader who speaks with a St. John Valley accent, he has been the authority’s director for 18 years and receives an annual salary of $104,000. His father, Elmer Violette, was a Democratic state senator, an unsuccessful congressional and United States Senate candidate, and a Maine Supreme Judicial Court judge.
In an interview, Violette justifies the dinners by reading quietly from a hand-written agenda of subjects he says were discussed on June 20, including the widening of the turnpike through the Portland area and the possibility of installing tolls on other parts of the Interstate.
“It’s very much a business meeting,” he says.
At the June 20 meal, he remembers, “We had some very nice wine.” But he adds: “I’m not a wine connoisseur.” He believes the food prices were not extravagant.
He says that his board, which hires the executive director, is comfortable with the management dinners.
His board chairman, former Democratic Senate president Gerard Conley Sr., served for years with Violette in the Legislature. Conley says he has never attended the dinners, but, “Unless there’s a law that prohibits it, I don’t have any problem with them having a supper meeting.”
Such a law is a possibility. Governor Baldacci, in a statement released by his press office after another Phoenix query, says he “would support legislation to apply the same financial ethical standards to independent authorities that apply to state government.”
The Legislature’s ethics guru, Marilyn Canavan, the Democratic state representative from Waterville who used to direct the state’s Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, says she would be happy to work with the governor on such legislation.
“Every state agency ought to have a set of ethical standards to guide them,” she says.
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Lance Tapley: ltapley@adelphia.net
