Sen. Trey Stewart- Segment 4

For over two decades, Inside Maine has delivered sharp political insight and in-depth discussion with Maine's top decision makers on 985 FM, AM 560, and WGAN.com. We are back on Inside Maine. I'm your host, Aaron Chadbourne. Thanks for being with us. What do we got playing, Jeremy? That would be a... Nobody's fault by mine. Led Zeppelin from their presence album. Always a little Zeppelin. Oh, yeah. No, I always find their way in once a show. I always got to try to get it in once a show. Doesn't always happen. But yeah, sometimes I, yeah. There we go. Yeah, there we go. Well, joining us now on the line is the state senator from Arristic County, the one that I like the best up there. Because, like, you know, I think for a long time when we said state senator from Arristic County, people thought Troy Jackson. And I think this is a major upgrade, even though it's a slightly different district up there. Well, Troy, Trey, Trey. I think there's a big difference between the two of them. Oh, absolutely. He's also the Republican leader in the Maine state Senate. Trey Stewart, thanks for being back on Inside Maine. Thanks for having me, guys. Appreciate it. So, Trey, I read this week that you are the one person in Augusta that seems to understand that we need to take... Medicaid fraud seriously, and you are leading the charge to get the Democrats and the entire legislature to approve a bill that would have a third party do an investigation. And I have to imagine that as the party that believes that government is important, that you have to be good stewards of government resources, the Democrats must be welcoming that investigation. And that bill's probably sailing through, right? Well, I will say, look, I'm certainly not the only one that cares about this. Every Republican legislator cares about this, and yet doesn't seem like any legislative Democrats care about this. Certainly not their leadership in terms of the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate. Of course, Republicans are in the minority, and so we can't advance a bill without their sign-off. And so we put that on their desk about a week ago, and instead of approving that bill to move forward, after putting out statements when the fraud was discovered, saying, oh, we take this very seriously. We care about this a lot, and we're standing by to take action. Here's their chance, and instead they're saying, no. So, you know, I think it's pretty obvious which side actually cares about this and which side is running scared from it in an election year. I mean, these folks are trying to hold on to this thing with both hands to just maintain power for power's sake. And all the while, it's you and your family and your tax dollars that are bearing the brunt of these poor decisions being made in Augusta by the Democrats.

Yeah, no, and I think that for people to really understand what you just said, because this process stuff in Augusta escapes a lot of people. But it's important to, you just said, we can't advance a bill. They're not, it's not like they're not. They're going to let it go forward. Like they're going to let you vote on it and they're going to vote it down. But because, you know, after the legislative session starts, the only way to get a bill in is with legislative council approval and the Democrats have six of the ten votes on legislative council. So you need the Democrat leaders to vote, yes, we'll let the bill in, we'll let it be considered. They won't even let it be considered because I think. They know that that's a bill that everyone should have to vote yes on. Every Democrat should have to say, yeah, let's go and investigate. Let's do it. But they're not even going to let that happen because they know, I mean, they must be scared of what an investigation would find. Because even if it doesn't rise, I just had this conversation with John Featherston before you joined, even if what they find doesn't rise to the level of fraud and there's a legal definition for what fraud is. I bet there will be fraud that is found. But even if it doesn't lies the level of fraud, everyone always says we want to crack down on what? Fraud, waste and there is certainly waste, and there is absolutely abuse going on right now, abuse of tax dollars, abuse of the population is meant to be served, abuse of the people not being served, abuse of the providers that should be actually awarded these dollars in contracts to help the people these programs are designed for. Yeah, that's exactly correct. And what they're doing by turning a blind eye to do this. And in fact, not just that. I say that, and I think about what that means, and that means that they're sort of unwilling to take action. What they're doing is actually cronyism. It's actually protecting the people that help to bankroll their own campaigns. It is helping people who they rely on in election years to engage in this activity and then refuse to do anything about it. So this isn't turning a blind eye. I really need to correct myself. on that because i think at this point we're long past speculating about motives at this point the only thing that's left is are you a part of the problem or are you a part of the solution and legislative democrats to date have done nothing except for be a part of this problem they are complicit in this fraud they are allowing it to continue they are promulgating it by the action and inaction that they are taking in augusta they created this system And now we are living under it, and the fraud is so rampant that it's being exposed, not even by any official channels, but by the main wire who are able to develop an algorithm to figure out where the fraud likely is and then go look at it. And yet, sure enough, there's the problem. Where there's smoke, there is indeed fire? And that's where we're at. And so the only question now is, is anybody going to be a part of the solution here? And apparently as of this week, the reality is, no, the Democrats are fine with this. In fact, I think they're benefiting from it. I would submit to you that there are and have been, without question, have been in past cycles, many campaign contributions given to the Democrats by these folks who are benefiting from the Medicaid system. And as a result, they maintain political power.

And so it's kind of easy to connect the dots on this. Don't take it from me. Just do a cursory search of the main ethics commission. This is all public information. You can go look at the reports yourself and see who's giving money to who. And the reality is that that system has been allowed. to exist and created by legislative Democrats. And now that there's a problem, they don't want to fix it. They're just trying to put their heads down and survive an election year. And I'm hoping that main people are smart enough to figure out what's going on here and realize that these people need to be removed from power. I mean, that's the thing, right? And this all reminds me of stuff that was happening back in the Baldacci era where Democrats put their friends in charge of agencies like main housing or the Turnpike. And you have all of this waste that benefits their friends. The money flows and it benefits them, helps them stay in office and have, you know, important jobs. And then, and you know, right, as someone who has to. because you're a citizen legislature, you have to have a real full-time job in addition to serving the legislature. So you have these people saying, okay, how could we like do this easier? What if we got these nonprofits to hire us? We made sure that the nonprofits got money. Like, it's this whole web that is incredibly, um,

ethically compromised. And it's unbelievable. But so you see that happening. You have to, you have to draw the connection that the main wire can do it. And did you notice that? I think the funniest thing now is that the main wire will go. They'll find something that's absurd. Like, you know, an office that has no one in it that's billing millions of dollars and getting all these reimbursements. They have high error rates. They have these shell corporations. They close down one. They open up another. They're able to find it pretty easily. And it's only after they go and report it. You'll hear the administration say, oh, nothing to see here. But then it soon follows with a visit from the state or a state audit or something else, a letter saying we need to do it because it turns out that there actually hasn't been the oversight that Janet Mills claims that there is. So why isn't the legislature? Why isn't the government oversight? Why aren't the committees of jurisdiction? Why is there no interest in finding out if the administration is actually doing it? its job? Well, I think first and foremost, the, you know, the administration as a whole, right, is really just one big bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy exists to protect itself. And so that whole system is designed and led by people who don't want any layers of the onion being pulled back at all because it jeopardizes them and their friends to continue to maintain their jobs. And so if, you know, heaven forbid somebody was found to be, you know, ineffective at their job and that might actually be on the chopping block, then that might create a... a problem for them, right? And meanwhile, as you know, Aaron, right, since the Page left office and we got to this point here just, you know, about seven years in, the amount of state government jobs has only exploded. And the solution to every single problem within state government is more jobs, less transparency. And I'm not talking about like growing jobs. Look, I'm all for growing jobs, but we're doing it entirely the wrong way. And so when that is happening, and the legislature, which has really effectively been neutered at this point by the executive branch and has been allowed to happen that way because of the same folks, you hit the nail on the head, right? It's the revolving door, right? Somebody gets into the legislature. They create a, you know, a grant or a program or expand a program or whatever. And the next thing, you know, they get out of the legislature and they're making six figures working for a nonprofit that is benefited by what they did or is actively sitting working in one of those positions while serving in the legislature determining, you know, DeKaloc, right, was working at Gateway Services sitting on the Appropriations Committee, the committee that determines where the money in the state government goes. and is actively getting a paycheck from these folks while the fraud is happening. And so all of these things, like you can't make the stuff up, right? And again, don't take it from me. It's all public information. I mean, anybody could go draw the connections here, you know, and then just make an inference as to why do you think that is.

No, I mean, but it's all of them, though, right? It's all of them. You look at like Ryan Fecto, and Ryan Fecto, I don't know, is involved in the fraud at the gateway services, the way that DeColac appears to be and is alleged to have been, hasn't been tried or anything. But look at Ryan Fecto. Ryan Fecto works for a Vesta housing, a nonprofit affordable housing developer, and he puts in a bill to raise transfer taxes to set aside money. for Maine housing to give out to affordable housing developers, the largest beneficiary of which is going to be a Vesta housing. I mean, this is how things are run on the Democrat side of the legislature. Yeah, exactly. I mean, so that's on the House side and then on the Senate side, you know, you've got Maddie Daughtry who runs a brewery and received a half a million dollar grant from state government to run that brewery. I mean, so, so again, right, like. No, she just happened to win the competition for it, right? She was, you know, she on merit rose to the top of the stack. I mean, even if true, right? Like, how do you sit in public office and, and with a straight face say that, you know, you deserve that over your constituency or over anybody else, right? I mean, it feels like a conflict to me. I wouldn't want to be receiving, you know, that kind of money, you know, regardless of the circumstances. Wow. you know, making decisions on what policies are going forward for the state. You know, and that's the thing is like, you know, I once heard John Martin say, right, there's no such thing as a conflict of interest within state government because of the citizen legislature. Coming from the guy, by the way, who set it up that way, right? So, so obviously there is, that doesn't pass a straight face test. People should be concerned about what's been allowed to go on here for the last seven years. It is corrupt. It is a cesspool. It is all of the things that you see and you think. And when you think about what bad government looks like, this is it. We are like the poster child for the entire country. And the only question that remains at this point is have Maine people had enough? Yeah. Have they had enough? I mean, I think that's hopefully the argument that you all are going to prosecute in this election. It's a midterm election, so you've got kind of whatever goes on at the national level contributing in some way. But in the local House races, I think if you have the right candidates and the Senate races, well, if you have the right candidates that can go out and tie the incumbent Democrat to exactly what's going on there and saying, look, these are the people that are covering up the flawed. implicit in the fraud, that they don't, they're not actually looking out to you. How are you all feeling? I know the deadline to get on the ballot is Monday for Republicans who want to run for the legislature. How are you feeling about the candidates that you've been able to recruit and line up and the chances of taking back either the House or the Senate? Yeah, we're feeling really good. You know, I think to your point, right, the deadline is coming right up here on Tuesday. We're going to have, certainly on the Senate side, a seat or a person in every seat come that deadline. And, you know, look, I read a headline the other day that said Republicans are trending in the right direction on voter registration in the state of Maine. That makes sense.

get much worse. And so I think this is a very important election for the legislature to, if not both chambers, at least one of the chambers has got to flip so that there's some check on this runaway Democrat nonsense. Yeah. No, look, I completely agree. And I think, you know, like I said, we're out there working hard every single day. We do need folks to get involved. And frankly, you know, the other thing, we need you to pray for us, too. I mean, this is absolutely a spiritual battle. At the end of the day, this is a battle of good versus evil. And whatever is happening within some of these people and some of the decisions that they're making is really pretty outrageous. But there is something that is stirring here. There is something that is at work that is bigger than you or I. And, you know, your prayers matter. And so please keep us in your prayers. And, you know, hey, go do something with your family this weekend. It doesn't, you know, all have to be negative. Go spend some good time with your family in a beautiful Maine weekend and spend some time with the Lord, too. No, I think that's well said. Could it keep it in perspective? And I think that's part of the thing that people miss is that like Democrats in Augusta, because they don't necessarily have other things that ground their lives, it's not faith, it's not family necessarily. Government becomes the catch-all. And when you do that, when government becomes kind of your religion, it's very, very dark and very dangerous. So I think that's well-placed Senator Stewart. Before I let you go, you know. The session as it, you know, is trying to wrap up in the next month or so, Democrats are attempting to raise taxes. What should people be paying attention to? Yeah, I think you're going to see yet another majority budget by the Democrats. You know, Republicans are simply just not, look, we're not going to be voting for, you know, the $300 checks that's funded for, by the way, by the rating the rainy day fund. That's off the table for us. And so we're not going to be engaging in this. And so I think at that point in time, you're going to end up seeing another majority budget that probably takes things even further to the extreme. I mean, you're seeing. your tax dollars going to fund abortion services here in Maine. So, you know, there's just a lot of things in there, a lot of poison pills, as you could say, that almost are put in there by design to prevent Republicans from voting for it, to make it even easier for the Democrats to do another majority budget. And so it is entirely on them and probably included in there. You know, they raised taxes on Maine people, you know, half a dozen times of the last year. I fully expect they're going to continue to do that. They're going to continue to raid the rainy day fund, raise taxes on you and your family. And there's no way that legislative Republicans will be able to stop it. What it all does boil down to is what I've already said a couple times on the show is, have you had enough? Have you had enough of this? That's going to be the battle cry from now until November. Senator Trey Stewart, the Republican leader in the Maine State Senator, thanks for joining us on Inside Maine.

Thanks, Aaron. Appreciate it. When we come back, we'll be joined in studio by Robert Wessel's candidate for governor. He'll be here live on Inside Maine. I'm Aaron Chadbourne. Don't go anywhere. Final hour of the show coming right up.