Thank you, Brian! .. I figured it out... turns out that it was related to the following code in my localsettings.php file:
require_once "$IP/extensions/NetworkAuth/NetworkAuth.php"; $wgNetworkAuthUsers[] = [ 'iprange' => [ '127.0.0.1' ], 'user' => 'parsoid' ];
I added this code when I was struggling to get the Parsoid/Visual editor working in my private enterprise site that requires server authentication for access to the site and I read somewhere that this something that someone had done to get the parsoid service access to the site from localhost calls.. I disabled it and not only did the parsoid/visual editor continue to work.. but also my maintenance script issues went away.. yay!
Thank you so much for your response.. your description of the possible scenarios led me to suspect this part of my configuration. Rock on! :-)
-Rich