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On a recent early morning, I got to meet up with reporter Josh Keefe outside an unmarked door to a warehouse-like building in Bangor with security cameras overhead. I was there to take pictures for his story, and he was there to hopefully get more information about what was inside.
Thanks to public business records, he knew the building on Farm Road was owned by a company registered to Dana White, head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and a prominent supporter of President Donald Trump. Josh also knew that the federal government was leasing it from the company for about $245,000 per year. What’s more, the inside of the building had been permitted by Bangor for a $2.7 million renovation that included adding rooms to interview and detain people, and for weapons storage.
But Josh didn’t know which government agency was involved yet. City code enforcement records only described the project as the “Bangor OPR Office.”
Then a man parked out front and began walking inside. Josh hurried after him and, in a roundabout way, got the answer he had been looking for. The building houses the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s new Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigates employee misconduct.
Read more about Josh’s reporting — and see a layout of the inside of the building that we got from public construction plans — here.
You should also check out reporter Kristian Moravec’s most recent story about federal funding for mental health services in schools. In December, a judge ordered the Trump administration to release congressionally allocated money for two big grant programs.
So Kristian set out to understand how the initial freeze had affected local school districts in Maine. She found that some schools had not hired needed staff for this school year — and that education institutions were now getting only half of what they had expected. Read more about what school districts said here.
We also have stories about how a new program will help homeowners in York, Cumberland, Kennebec and Penobscot counties replace their roofs; why the federal government is choosing this moment to investigate Maine for requiring insurers to cover abortion; how the Iran war is making road repair more expensive and much more.
Happy spring!
Erin
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