An Underlying Lie
By: Conner Drigotas
Four Summer Days
The old joke is that Maine has two seasons: winter and July.
Officials at the National Weather Service wrote of Maine in July of 2024 that it “WILL BE REMEMBERED FOR SIGNIFICANTLY ABOVE NORMAL TEMPERATURES, HUMIDITY, AND FOR PORTIONS OF THE REGION, RAINFALL.”
In other words, to escape the heat and humidity, being on a boat in the Atlantic with a friend sounds like an attractive use of time for a young man. Even better if you’re getting paid to learn one of the trades that is uniquely tied to Maine’s cultural identity.
When State Representative and career lobsterman Billy Bob Faulkingham set out on four summer days in 2024 with his 10-year-old son and one of his son’s neighborhood “close friends,” a 14-year-old, on board, he was introducing one of Maine’s essential industries to the next generation. Lobstering is an industry steeped in tradition, handed down through bloodlines or shared by an established lobsterman with family friends who show an interest. Billy Bob’s son already had seasons of lobstering with his father and grandfather under his belt. Billy Bob was three when his father started taking him out.
“And we hauled some traps,” Faulkingham recalled in an interview, “Summertime lobsters are a little bit different, you can catch lobsters real close to shore, and the weather's real nice, and all that. I think I paid him $544, and that was about it, you know, didn't think nothing of it.”
For those four days on the water, however, Faulkingham was cited by officials at the Maine Department of Labor, who fined him for failing to maintain employment records and working a minor in “hazardous occupations” In the initial citation, they said he owed more than $6,000.
DOL officials getting involved begs an important question: Should government officials interfere with “family and informal relationships” without consent?
Of course not.
But Faulkingham was still hounded by government officials, and years later, is still fighting in court.
For those four days, it was honest work for honest pay. Then, political activists and bureaucrats got involved, and it became something else entirely.
“Absolutely absurd”
By January 2025, DOL officials had still taken no action, there had not even been a notification that the matter was being looked into, and Representative Faulkingham was busy as the leader of Maine’s minority Republican caucus. Amid a budget negotiation and early revelations of a federal investigation into Medicaid fraud in Maine, Faulkingham was summoned to the governor’s office.
“I thought [the meeting] was about the budget,” Faulkingham says. But instead, he alleges the governor’s chief of staff, Jeremy Kennedy, “started screaming” about a quote he had given to the press about the alleged Medicaid fraud, swore at Faulkingham’s staff, and wasn’t interested in talking about the budget. The heated meeting became the subject of a letter from Mr. Faulkingham, asking the governor to take “necessary steps” to quell Mr. Kennedy’s behavior. That letter was later used in political jockeying around a similar alleged incident in D.C between Kennedy and White House officials.
“Three weeks later, a Department of Labor guy, Bart Hutchinson, called and asked if he could see me.” Faulkingham says. “I was just honest, straightforward, but he kept saying ‘employer,’ and ‘employee.’ I'm like, no, I'm not an employer, that's not how lobstering works, and he's like, ‘I'll be the judge of that’. His timing [for looking into my business], after the meeting in the governor’s office, was not a coincidence.”
Whether the scale was thumbed or not, the result was the same: Hutchinson determined Faulkingham to have violated labor law and failed to keep required records. He was fined.
Allan Taubman, a UConn-educated attorney and the hearing officer who authored the Maine Bureau of Labor Standard’s (BLS) Final Decision, stood by Hutchinson’s determination, writing that he and his coworker at “The BLS maintains that being on a boat is a hazardous occupation for 14- and 15-year-old minors. It relies upon federal rules to ascertain if occupations are prohibited for minors 14 and 15 years of age.”
“Absolutely absurd,” Faulkingham says of that determination: “I was like, you guys sell licenses to eight-year-olds. How can the same government that sells licenses to eight-year-olds come after me for taking a 14-year-old and say that it's a hazardous occupation?”
“You can go and find hundreds of pictures of children fishing on lobster boats on the internet.” He continues, “The industry is actually so proud of it that they put out calendars with the kids fishing on lobster boats, it's a, you know, it's a beloved tradition.”
The record of past citations bolsters Faulkingham’s claims of political targeting. Despite young men and women up and down Maine’s coast routinely participating in the industry from a young age, Maine Public reports that “there have been no other child labor penalties in the fishing industry going back to at least 2017.” According to Faulkingham, there has never been one.
“Shot across the bow”
Between the initial citation in May 2025, the final determination in February 2026, and to this day, Faulkingham has had no shortage of defenders. Chief among them are state and regional Lobstermen and Fishermen Associations.
“It caused an industry-wide shockwave.” Faulkingham said, “There's a lot of kids being left on the dock right now because of this, which is horrible.”
In articles across Maine media, first to fifth generation lobstermen and their supporters expressed concerns about “fewer opportunities,” overreach that “deserves to be called out,” and shared their own stories of how “Maine students have historically learned the rhythms of the tide.”
While Billy Bob contends that even new guidance, released in the aftermath of his citation becoming public knowledge, confirms his actions were not unlawful, let alone wrong, DOL officials maintain he is “subject to penalties.”
The determination made by Hutchinson, Taubman, and others is chilling to peaceful, educational, and cultural traditions. The ruling makes claims based on the lie that a government official can override consent – and Maine DOL officials are far from alone in acting on that untruth. Taubman and his coworkers claim that, due to rules laid out in the Federal Labor Standards Act, DOL officials are required to do something, but that properly paints them in the same unflattering light as all those who are “just following orders.”
Adherence to the law is the same justification used by officials whose abuses range from banning year-round holiday decorations to imprisoning free speech advocates, among many others. But legal precedent doesn’t void reality: initiating violence and diminishing wealth by force or fraud reduces happiness, harmony, and prosperity. Always.
As for the young man whose presence on the boat has snowballed into the current mess? “Oh, he loved it.” Billy Bob said, “It was a kind of rite of passage, a little bit of a summer adventure.” No harm befell him, and he was not coerced in any way. “For the first year, we never even told him about the legal issues, because we were expecting state officials to do the right thing, which they didn't.”
The fines were reduced to $3,468 between the initial citation and the final determination. To date, Mr. Faulkingham refuses to pay. “Fighting it legally hurts very much, financially. It's just so sick, they're fighting you with your own dollars. I'm not presumed innocent; I'm having to go prove my innocence against these people. It’s just not what our system of justice is supposed to be.”
His appeal is awaiting action in Superior Court.
