Maine State Employees (2018 - 2022)

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Maine Freedom of Access Act, I hereby request the following records:

Monthly electronic listings of all employees of the Maine Executive Branch from January 1, 2018 to July 31, 2022. Specifically, I am seeking electronic listings of all individuals employed within all state agencies, commissions, and departments for each month from January 1, 2018 to July 31, 2022.

For each month, I’m seeking a spreadsheet, database, or delimited text file(s) — not paper records or a PDF created from data — with the following fields for each employee: full legal name, unique employee identification code, date of birth or age, title, department or agency, race, gender, full-time/part-time status, location, hire date, termination date, civil service status, and gross annual salary. If you cannot produce any of these fields, please let me know and generate only the available variables.

If these data are not available at monthly intervals, please produce the datasets at the most frequent interval possible. For example, if the data is not available monthly, please produce the data at quarterly intervals.

In addition, please include any lookup tables that may be needed to interpret the data. For example, if departments are listed with codes linked to a separate table, I will be happy to join the records myself, rather than require your staff to do so.

I am comfortable working with large data sets and can receive the records in a variety of formats (.dbf, .csv, .mdb, etc).

I also request that, if appropriate, fees be waived as we believe this request is in the public interest, as suggested but not stipulated by 1 M.R.S.A. § 408(6). The requested documents will be made available to the general public free of charge as part of the public information service at MuckRock.com, processed by a representative of the news media/press and is made in the process of news gathering and not for commercial usage.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 5 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Ben Goehring

Thank you very much for passing along these data! I have a couple of, hopefully quick, questions.

First, in the current file, the race column includes numbers rather than descriptions of each employee's race. Could you please include a crosswalk that shows which numbers correspond to which races?

Second, is it possible to receive a historical copy of the current listing of employees? If so, could I request a copy from October 2020 (or around then)?

Thank you very much for your time and assistance.

Best,
Ben