(NEWS CENTER) -- Gov. Paul LePage is standing by his claim Thursday that Speaker of the House Mark Eves should not be president of the Goodwill Hinckley School.
Eves has been "an ardent foe of charter schools for his entire political career, then he turns around and gets hired to run a charter school," said LePage in a statement.
The statement from the governor comes one day after the school's board of directors decided to dismiss Eves before he even started work. Eves said that decision came after LePage threatened to cut off state funding for the private school. Eves alleges the governor told the chairman of the school board he would cut more than $500,000 in state funding for the private school unless they got rid of Eves. Eves and his lawyer say that would have jeopardized other private money and put the school out of business.
The Governor's office sent a written statement Thursday; they didn't say the governor threatened to cut funding for Goodwill Hinckley, but didn't deny it, either.
"To provide half-a-million dollars in taxpayer funding to a charter school that would be headed by Maine's most vehement anti-charter-school politician is not only the height of hypocrisy, it is totally unacceptable," said the statement.
Eves was hired earlier this month to run Goodwill Hinckley and its charter school, the Maine Academy of Natural Sciences . He was due to start work next week. But the Governor objected to then, saying Eves wasn't qualified and had been a staunch opponent of charter schools like the academy.
"The governor has didn't lot of things we would characterize as out of bounds, this one crosses a new line, one that goes outside the political world into my personal live and my ability to provide for my family," said Eves.
"When he didn't get his way he decided to use taxpayer money to get his way and fire the Speaker, and most people would agree that's a line a governor should not cross, and not a line federal law allows a governor to cross, so he broke federal law," said David Wibbert, Eves' lawyer.
Several lawmakers have expressed their surprise and a group of representatives said they are discussing impeachment.
