AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine Senate President Troy Jackson will not face an ethics probe after a Republican complained that he may have violated residency rules by living part time in an Augusta home while representing Aroostook County.
The five-member commission, which includes two Republicans, voted unanimously against an investigation on Wednesday. It came after the panel’s executive director, Jonathan Wayne, recommended last week against a full investigation into Jackson, a Democrat from Allagash, in response to an ethics complaint from Rep. John Andrews, R-Paris.
The commission also agreed it could only weigh in on whether Jackson violated any campaign finance rules through the Augusta residence and not on Andrews’ additional claims he committed crimes such as mortgage fraud.
“To do the job well, it’s very close to a full-time job,” Commissioner David Hastings, a former Republican state senator from Fryeburg, said during the meeting.
Andrews filed the complaint after the conservative Maine Wire, the news arm of the Maine Policy Institute, reported in August on Jackson’s pending lawsuit against the former owners of an Augusta home he and his partner bought in 2019 and then sold in 2021.
Both the report and Andrews’ complaint suggested Jackson may have committed fraud by obtaining a Federal Housing Administration loan to purchase the North Belfast Avenue home and declare it as his principal residence for at least a year. Wayne noted Jackson’s Allagash home is about 300 miles away from the State House.
On Wednesday, Donald Alexander, a former judge on Maine’s high court serving as Jackson’s attorney, said the Senate president would have been lying if he didn’t say he was mostly in Augusta between 2020 and 2021. But those federal mortgage rules differ from state residency requirements, and Jackson said he always considered Allagash his permanent home.
After the vote, Jackson spoke to reporters, saying “it’s not good for the Legislature when we take these partisan shots at each other.”
“The Maine Wire and their cabal of legislators are going to keep doing this,” he said.
Jackson, who was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2002 before later joining the Senate and becoming its president in 2018, said Allagash is his home and that he bought the Augusta property to better fulfill his duties. For decades, lawmakers have routinely owned or rented Augusta properties over the years to limit commutes during legislative sessions.
The residency probe was one of two cases Republicans have brought against Jackson. Andrews told ethics commissioners on Wednesday that the Senate president’s activities constituted “an incongruence that needs to be approached in depth.”
Rep. Josh Morris, R-Turner, also has requested the state investigate whether Jackson committed insurance fraud, claiming he knew about a carpenter ant infestation when acquiring the Augusta home in 2019 but did not deal with it before filing a claim two years later for ant-related damage.
Attorney General Aaron Frey’s office said this month it received Morris’ letter and declined to share additional comment. Jackson has denied Morris’ accusation by pointing to legal documents showing the 2021 claim was for bathroom water damage and not ant damage.
