Where to look
The official sources, and why they beat any summary
The statute page, the agency site and the board docket are free to read, and each number arrives attached to the subsection that publishes it. This piece shows what the official text carries and a summary drops.
Title 1, section 408-A of the Maine Revised Statutes, read on the Legislature's website on September 6, 2026, prices a standard black and white copy at no more than 10 cents a page and gives an agency five working days to acknowledge a records request, and the page publishing those rules is free to read. That is the whole argument for the official sources: the deadline, the fee, the cap and the appeal route, stated by the body that wrote the rule, beside the subsection that carries it. A summary of the same statute, however careful, moves each number one step away from its address, and the address is what lets a reader check it.
The page that is the rule
The Legislature's page for section 408-A does not describe the section; it prints it, under the heading "Public records available for inspection and copying". The same text is offered as a PDF and as an MS-Word file, so a reader can keep a copy. Around the section sit the tools of a working library: a Statute Search, the contents of chapter 13, the contents of Title 1, a list of all titles, the Maine Law and Disclaimer page, the Revisor's Office and the Legislature itself. A reader can arrive at one subsection and walk outward to the whole code, free and without an account. A page like this is not commentary. It is the thing itself, published by the Maine Legislature, which the page names in its own navigation.
What does a summary lose first?
The numbers go first, then the addresses. Subsection 3 requires the agency or official to acknowledge a request within 5 working days of receiving it, and to give, within a reasonable time, a good faith, nonbinding estimate of the time frame. Subsection 8, paragraph B, forbids any charge for the first 2 hours of staff time and caps the charge after that at $25 per hour; paragraph A caps copies at 10 cents for a standard 8 1/2 by 11 inch black and white page. Subsection 10, paragraph A, allows payment to be required in advance when the estimated total cost exceeds $100. A nonbinding estimate is a term of art worth pausing on: the agency offers a likely time frame and is not held to it. The folio on fees and advance payment follows the money through the same subsections.
When the state's own summary goes quiet
The state runs overview pages as well, and their silences teach more than any critique. The access page at maine.gov/foaa, read on September 6, 2026, says the Act "grants the people of this state a broad right of access to public records while protecting legitimate governmental interests and the privacy rights of individual citizens," and that it "ensures the accountability of the government to the citizens of the state by requiring public access to the meetings of public bodies." Those sentences describe the law; they do not carry it. The page does not publish the statutory citation, the definitions, the rules on who may request, or the Ombudsman's powers. An honest summary says what it leaves out, and the official text is where the missing pieces are found.
| The point | Overview page, maine.gov/foaa, read September 6, 2026 | Statute, Title 1, section 408-A, read September 6, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Citation | Not published | Title 1, section 408-A |
| Acknowledgment | Not published | 5 working days (subsection 3) |
| Staff time | Not published | First 2 hours free, then up to $25 per hour (subsection 8, paragraph B) |
| Copies | Not published | Up to 10 cents a page (subsection 8, paragraph A) |
| Advance payment | Not published | When the estimate exceeds $100 (subsection 10, paragraph A) |
| Refusal | Not published | Appeal as provided in section 409 (subsection 4) |
The other free shelves
The pattern repeats wherever a public body publishes its own work. The Human Rights Commission's pages, read on September 6, 2026, set out the sequence after a complaint is filed: the respondent generally has one month to respond, either party then has a seventeen day period for a written submission of disagreement, and the Commissioners vote at a scheduled Commission meeting that is open to the public, with the full process to be completed within two years of filing. The Board of Overseers of the Bar, read on September 6, 2026, publishes an attorney directory, disciplinary decisions organized by date with the names of the respondents, and a hearing schedule. The Judicial Branch page on its courts, read on September 6, 2026, describes each court in its own words, from the Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, deciding appeals on questions of law, to the Traffic Violations Bureau handling traffic tickets for the entire state. None of it is sold.
Why does the address beat the prose?
A citation is an address before it is anything else, and how a citation is built decides whether a claim can be checked in one minute or not at all. A summary that says only that an answer must come quickly cannot be tested. One that writes "subsection 3, five working days" can be tested the same afternoon, on a free page, against the words the Legislature enacted. The official sources also fail in the open, which is itself a service to the reader. The Commission's pages read on September 6, 2026 do not publish the deadline for bringing a complaint; the Board's site publishes no statement of what the Board cannot do; the courts page publishes no rules on access to case records or dockets. A summary that papers over those silences has stopped summarizing and started inventing, and what a reference site cannot do is name that line honestly.
One minute, one search box
The habit that follows costs a minute. On the Legislature's statute pages, the box marked Statute Search takes a title and section number, and the list of titles lets a reader without a number walk the code until a heading matches the subject. Entering Title 1, section 408-A and scrolling to subsection 3 puts the five working day rule on the screen in the words the Legislature enacted, beside the subsection number against which any summary of it can be checked. The PDF of the section, offered beside the text, keeps the wording and its address together for later reading.