AUGUSTA, Maine — Gov. Janet Mills withdrew two of her nominees to a Maine commission on state-tribal relations in a Tuesday letter that hammered the panel’s leaders for taking the “troubling” step of joining tribes to oppose the governor’s picks.
Last week, the tribes and leaders of the Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission opposed the nominations of Lloyd Cuttler of Carrabassett Valley and Richard Bronson Jr. of Bangor to serve on the panel, saying their past disagreements with tribes on certain issues made them inappropriate choices for the body.
After confirmation hearings on Thursday, leaders of the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee delayed action on Cuttler and Bronson while advancing a third nominee, Gordon Kramer of Enfield. Mills withdrew the first two picks in a letter to Democratic legislative leaders on Tuesday, saying the commission “appears to have become a rubber stamp for monolithic thought.”
“The Judiciary Committee, and the entire Legislature, should have grave concerns over the precedent this sets for the future,” Mills wrote.
It is the latest example of strife between the Democratic governor and Maine’s tribes spilling out into the open. The commission was formed under a historic 1980 land-claims settlement. The tribes have been trying to overhaul the document that regulates them like cities and towns since Mills took office in 2019. She has generally opposed their efforts.
Mills’ stance on tribal relations has put her at odds with most in her party, including House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, who has championed a sweeping tribal sovereignty package that the governor vetoed last year. The sides have come together on compromises, including a major deal in 2022 that handed a new mobile sports betting market to the tribes.
Bronson, the Lincoln town manager, and Cuttler, a Carrabassett Valley selectman, have opposed sovereignty measures due to local concerns. Lincoln officials have said they rely on uniform application of environmental laws on tribal and non-tribal land, while Carrabassett Valley fears the Penobscot Nation could place thousands of acres it owns there into a tax-free trust.
Penobscot Nation Ambassador Maulian Bryant dismissed those concerns by calling them scare tactics. The leaders of the tribal-state commission, Chairman Newell Lewey and Executive Director Jill Tompkins, wrote a letter to lawmakers last week saying Mills’ office rejected their suggested picks while saying the governor wanted to nominate members without agendas.
“The current nominees do not meet that criteria,” they wrote.
The letter from Lewey and Tompkins notes that one commissioner — former Republican state lawmaker Richard Rosen — opposed them weighing in on Mills’ nominees. The governor singled out Tompkins in her Tuesday letter, saying that she violated the neutrality expected of a professional staffer to represent all members of the panel.
Tompkins did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. Mills spokesperson Ben Goodman did not answer a question about whether the governor would replace nominees, though he said the commission’s actions will make it hard to find qualified candidates.
“Expressing a countervailing view does not make a person unqualified to serve on [the commission], an entity whose purpose is to have conversations about disagreements and to find common ground,” Mills wrote in her letter.
