Freedom of Access
In Maine, the Freedom of Access Act (FOAA) is a law that requires public institutions to share public records and documents with anyone who requests them. You can submit a written request to ask for specific materials like emails, memos, meeting minutes, and legal agreements.
There are a few reasons why some documents are protected and cannot be released to the public through FOAA.
I’ve FOAA’d thousands of pages of documents from the Cavalier’s former employers, Maine RSU 21 and Lewiston Public Schools.
RSU 21 took months to comply with my FOAA request. When they eventually released documents, they included hundreds files that had nothing to do with what I asked for. One might suggest that this could be seen as a deliberate tactic to bury relevant information under mountains of irrelevant documents. While I would love to do a document dump and include them on this site, RSU 21 did not appropriately redact names of people who could be hurt by that action.
Some documents are included here in the form of blackout poetry. Others, which I’ve not included here, informed this work.