LEWISTON — Mayor Robert Macdonald blasted the Maine Attorney General’s Office on Monday for doing “absolutely nothing” about a fraudulent charter school application that could have cost Lewiston taxpayers a lot of money, Macdonald said.

During a morning news conference at City Hall, Macdonald said he has sent three letters to the AG’s Office since March 10 “requesting they look at it and prosecute. I never heard from them,” Macdonald said.

“We’re not going to sit here and sweep this under the carpet,” the mayor said. “I’m not going to stand by and get treated like this; the city of Lewiston is not going to get treated like this.”

If the school had been approved, Lewiston would have lost a significant amount of money from its state portion of public school funding. “It’s about time they do their job and get on the case,” Macdonald said.

Maine’s Attorney General is Janet Mills, a former state legislator and Androscoggin County district attorney. Her office shared with the Sun Journal on Monday a letter to MacDonald on Friday that no decision has been made that an investigation is warranted.

Director of Investigations Brian MacMaster wrote on Nov. 14 that his office needs “a bit more time to thoroughly review this matter in order to determine if there is a basis for this office to initiate a formal investigation. We will let you know in the near future the results of our review.”

Last year, among hundreds of pages in an application for the proposed Lewiston-Auburn Academy Charter School, there were three letters of endorsement purportedly written by prominent Lewiston-area citizens.

The letters were fabrications, it was learned.

The application contained false endorsements from former Lewiston Mayor Larry Gilbert, Lewiston Economic Development Director Lincoln Jeffers and Bates College professor Mara Tieken.

All three said they met with the charter school applicants, Tarlan Ahmadov and Husseyin Kara, who have ties to Turkish Gulen schools. After discussing the school structure, Gilbert, Jeffers and Tieken did not endorse it.

“I never said I endorsed the charter school,” Gilbert told the Sun Journal in February. “Personally I’m opposed to it because the funding would only take away from the public schools.”

The fraudulent endorsements were exposed by Lewiston Superintendent Bill Webster, who, during the Feb. 7 public hearing on the school’s application, said he personally asked the three if they endorsed the school as stated in the application.

They had not.

“It raises some concern about the truthfulness in this application,” Webster said.

Macdonald said Monday that if Lewiston’s school superintendent and School Committee Chairman Jim Handy had not investigated and opposed the school during public meetings before the charter commission, the school might have been approved and would have received significant taxpayer money.

On March 3, the Maine Charter School Commission rejected the Ahmadov and Kara application, and voted to strike language inviting the school organizers from applying again.

At the time, Commissioner Ande Smith said he was “incensed” they were lied to in the application and recommended it be referred to the Attorney General’s Office.

On March 10, Macdonald sent his first letter asking the AG’s Office to investigate, he said. He has since sent two more letters and not yet received a reply from Mills or her staff.

bwashuk@sunjournal.com