AUGUSTA – Despite a recent survey showing one-third of the state’s police departments failed to comply with Maine’s Freedom of Access Act, two key police groups on Wednesday opposed a bill requiring mandatory written policies and training on what information must be made public upon request.

“What we found is that … Maine law is not applied equally across the state,” Judy Meyer, a member of the Maine Freedom of Information Coalition, told members of the Legislature’s Criminal Justice Committee. “If this passes, the public can be guaranteed fairness.”

The bill was spawned by the Maine FOI Coalition’s surprise November survey of more than 300 public offices, including 74 police departments, where auditors asked to view that day’s police log – public information under the law.

Within days of the audit’s release, the Maine Chiefs of Police Association, a group representing the state’s top law enforcement officials, revised its written policy and pledged more education on the issue.

In his testimony Wednesday, however, the group’s spokesman, Winthrop Police Chief Joseph Young, said he opposed the mandatory training.

“This bill is redundant, unreasonable and unnecessary,” said Young, who disputed some of the audit’s findings. “It seems a bit unfair that two-thirds of departments should be punished for the one-third not in compliance.”

Meyer said she found the apparent change of heart among the chiefs group disconcerting and prompted by resentment that police were singled out despite a similar compliance rate among school departments.

“That’s no different than saying we shouldn’t get a speeding ticket because everybody else was speeding, too,” said Meyer, the editorial page editor of the Lewiston Sun Journal.

Young denied any resentment on the part of the chiefs association, which has agreed to provide three voluntary training sessions on the issue in April.

The committee will hold a work session on the bill on Feb. 25.

The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Theodore Koffman, D-Bar Harbor, would require the Maine Criminal Justice Academy to adopt minimum standards for public information policies by June 2004.

By January 2005, each department would have to adopt a written policy and train its personnel.

Major Craig Poulin of the Maine State Police also stood in opposition of the bill, saying the training could prove a drain on state revenues, which are already in a tenuous condition.

In a year of cutbacks, talk of new state spending didn’t sit well with some committee members, including Rep. Paul Lessard, D-Topsham.

“Priorities have to be set and this probably isn’t one of them,” said Lessard, a retired police chief. He said municipal governments would also be forced to pick up the cost of training their local officers.

“Education is always cheaper than the alternative,” Maine Press Association President Rex Rhoades later countered in his support of the bill.

The Maine Civil Liberties Union and the Maine Municipal Association also backed the bill at Wednesday’s public hearing, at which supporters said the legislation could help clarify any questions about what information is and isn’t public.

While state statute provides police several exceptions to the Freedom of Access Act, a police log must contain the date and time a complaint is made, the nature of the complaint, the location, the agency responding and the status of the complaint, whether active or inactive, according to a recent court decision.