The Maine Heritage Policy Center paid $800 dollars for vendor information from the Maine State Housing Authority. But MHPC spokesman Sam Aldophsen says his group got more than its money's worth when they learned that during the past 13 years, the housing authority has paid for a variety of services ranging from in-house massages to a magician. MSHA director Dale McCormick says many of the expenses were incurred prior to her arrival and that during her watch, the agency has been run efficiently.

The list of vendors is more than 535 pages long. It includes individuals and companies paid by the quasi-state agency over the past 13 years. There are hotel and restaurant bills racked up at out-of-state conferences. But there are also theater tickets, passes to Funtown-Splashtown USA, and payments to a masseuse and a magician.

Although many of the details related to the more than 6,000 vendors identified by MSHA are still being researched, McCormick says it will eventually become clear how her agency conducts itself: "In a business-like manner," she says. "MaineHousing invests $1.2 million a day in Maine and unfortunately all this brouhaha takes away from the really important work we do to stimulate Maine's economy."

McCormick says many of the vendor expenses are out of her control, particularly those dealing with staff training to the satisfaction of federal agencies that oversee many aspects of her agency's operations. Other sessions, she says, were part of a staff incentives program.

McCormick says a number of the expenses, such as the magician, predated her 2005 arrival as the agency's executive director. She said she tried to give the Heritage Policy Center as much information as she could in a timely manner, although she is still working on the details of how much was paid to whom and when -- a delay which has annoyed the center.

"It seems like we can't win with them," McCormick says. "We gave them what we could quickly, which is just the vendor list. Next what's coming -- which takes longer -- is the detail on each transaction. They've asked for 13 years of our financial transactions. That's 70,000 a year, that's 800,000 total, and almost every single one has personally-indentifiable information that has to be crossed out."

"We're not implicating them in wrongdoing, we're simply bringing this to public's attention and looking for answers," says Sam Adolphsen, the director of the Center for Open Government for the Maine Heritage Policy Center. The information he has received to date from the housing authority leads him to believe that there have to be some expenses being racked up that have little to do with providing affordable housing for needy Mainers.

"When you have government agencies that are going potentially outside the scope of their mission and spending hard-earned tax dollars, that's where we have a problem," Adolphsen says. "We don't know all the details yet about the spending list at all. But what we do know is that there are some questions there that need to be answered and the public has a right to know how their money is being spent."

State Sen. Roger Katz is an Augusta Republican who co-chairs the Legislature's Government Oversight Committee. He says the housing authority is already on the radar screen of the state Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability -- otherwise known as OPEGA.

"I hope we can get to it sooner rather than later," Katz says. "This should absolutely not be a partisan political issue, and I hope it won't be."

State Sen. Margaret Craven also sits on Katz's committee and she opposes the investigation, which she has denounced as politically motivated by majority Republicans. She says she initially had some concerns about expenses such as the massages.

"But when I asked about it, they said it was somebody who was invited into a conference, that they were having to do neck massages and I thought, well a lot of companies do that," Craven says.

Housing Authority Director Dale McCormick is one of the last Democrats in a state government awash in Republicans. She says it's no coincidence her agency is being targeted.

"Things like this are usually about one of two things: money or power," McCormick says. "And I'll leave it up to you wonderful investigative reporters to find out what money is changing hands and what power is desired that they don't have."

McCormick and the agency's board of directors will hold their regularly scheduled meeting Friday.