Maine ending 17 days later. He said that the declaration was necessary in order to cope with the loss of federally funded positions during the shutdown, such as by transferring state-funded personnel to functions originally carried out by the federally funded personnel to minimize layoffs. His move to do so was met with widespread negative criticism, and was labeled as an unnecessary "overreach of power". On June 30, 2014, the website Talking Points Memo reported that LePage had met eight times with members of the sovereign citizen movement between January and September 2013. According to participants, the sovereign citizens group used these meetings, some of which lasted nearly three hours, to inform LePage of their beliefs, which include assertions that the U.S. dollar and Maine state courts are illegal, that Maine Senate President Justin Alfond and Maine House Speaker Mark Eves are guilty of treason and should be executed, and that the U.S. government and the United Nations are planning for a war against Americans. LePage set up a meeting between Kennebec County sheriff Randall Liberty and the sovereign citizens group and asked Liberty to take the group's concerns to the state attorney general. In June 2015, Good Will-Hinckley, a charitable organization for at-risk youths that runs two charter schools, hired Democratic House Speaker Mark Eves to be their next president. LePage, however, threatened to withhold $500,000 of state funding for the school if they hired Eves, due to his voting record against charter schools in Maine. LePage's choice to do so was labeled as "blackmail" as well as "political interference". The incident was subject to a federal investigation, but no charges were issued. Some Democrats in the Legislature launched an effort to impeach LePage over this and other matters on January 14, 2016, but the effort was indefinitely postponed, effectively killing it, on a 96–52 vote. Drug-dealing comments, racism, and crass voicemail LePage generated national headlines by stating at a January 6, 2016, town hall meeting in Bridgton regarding drug dealers: (Drug dealers) are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty; these types of guys, they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave, which is a real sad thing because then we have another issue we have to deal with down the road. The comment