Former Gov. Paul LePage vowed to revive plans to build a mental health facility in Bangor if elected, an idea that was previously met with fierce condemnation.
In 2016, during his final term as governor, LePage proposed building an 8,300-square-foot center across the road from the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center campus on Hogan Road. The new facility was meant to house criminal defendants unfit to stand trial due to mental illness, easing overcrowding at Augusta’s Riverview Psychiatric Center, which had lost its federal accreditation at the time.
His latest proposal revived a controversial plan that ultimately went nowhere after Bangor leaders and residents came out against it over safety concerns.
“We were going to put a forensic hospital here in Bangor,” LePage said during a Thursday campaign stop in Bangor. “The reason for that was we were going to empty some pods in Augusta and bring them, the forensic patients, females and males up to Bangor.”
LePage did not elaborate on how the facility would be built and it was not clear where such a project would be allowed.
Initially, LePage had floated a new facility in Augusta, but Democratic legislative leaders blocked the $3 million proposal, forcing him to look elsewhere.
Sen. Joe Baldacci, D-Bangor, was the Bangor mayor when LePage initially proposed the project, which the city blocked. Baldacci said the facility was a bad idea then and still is
“I am astonished that he would come to Bangor and peddle a horrible idea that was roundly rejected by the community,” Baldacci said.
The facility would have been a privately run psychiatric detention center with barbed wire fences. No one from LePage’s administration reached out to Bangor officials about the effort, Baldacci said.
“It was just like an insult to people in Bangor to be honest,” he said.
When LePage was first pushing the idea, the Bangor City Council imposed a moratorium on any psychiatric facilities being built in Bangor, citing concern over the governor’s proposed location, as well as security and funding.
In response, LePage threatened to sue the city.
Despite the pushback, LePage moved forward and signed an $11.3 million, 30-year lease for the Bangor facility with Ellis Commercial Development. That agreement included language prohibiting the state from ending the lease to build a similar facility in another location, a move that was seen as largely forcing Mills to open the facility without legislative approval.
In his final weeks as governor, LePage signed a contract with a company to operate the facility. At the request of then governor-elect Mills, the company did not sign the contract.
In February 2019, a month after Riverview was recertified, Mills announced that she would seek legislative approval to operate the facility as part of the 48-bed Bangor hospital, adding 20 beds.
Now, the facility serves older patients with severe and persistent mental illness.
Scott Ogden, a spokesperson for Mills’ reelection campaign, said that the decertification of Riverview while LePage was in office shows why the man is not fit to run a forensic mental health facility.
“It was a complete and total disaster that Governor Mills had to clean up when she took office,” he said. “And working closely with the Legislature, she did clean it up, creating a new psychiatric facility for inpatient mental health services that is staffed by State employees and not an out-of-state private prison company like LePage wanted.”