A three-year dispute over who has final say on the Androscoggin County budget – and the commissioners’ salary and benefits – is finally headed for court.

At the heart of the dispute is whether the seven county commissioners can act alone in approving a final budget, including any salary or benefit changes for themselves, or whether they need the approval of a finance committee made up of representatives from the towns.

In a civil lawsuit filed in Superior Court, nearly all the municipalities in the county allege that the commissioners set their own salaries and benefits without having the legal authority to do so.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday on behalf of 12 cities and towns by Lewiston-based attorney Peter J. Brann, stems from the wording of the county charter approved by voters in 2012.

Within months of the vote, the Legislature changed the charter language in a bill, ultimately signed into law by the governor, that said voters had cast their ballots for the “wrong charter,” and the bill corrected the language to reflect the original intent of the charter commission.

The new language gave the commissioners final budget approval, not the budget committee.

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“That’s what started it. That bait-and-switch made people unhappy,” Lewiston City Administrator Ed Barrett said Thursday. The city of Lewiston is among the communities that brought the suit.

County commissioners issued a statement acknowledging the lawsuit.

“The commissioners regret that public resources are being expended on this unfortunate lawsuit but are confident that the county has carried out its business in full compliance with the terms of the charter. The charter itself is valid as the governing document for our county. The commissioners will be reviewing the lawsuit with legal counsel and will have no further comment at this time,” the statement said.

The contentious budget process between the elected commissioners and the appointed budget committee is playing out as many towns see increasing costs and declining state aid, squeezing their budgets and making municipalities more sensitive to county costs. Several other county charters, including those in Cumberland and Knox counties, spell out that the budget committee has final authority over the budget.

What tipped the Androscoggin County dispute over to a court case was a commissioners’ vote last November that overruled a budget committee’s decision to cut the pay and benefits for an expanding board of commissioners.

Previous to the vote, the chairman earned $8,392 and two commissioners earned $7,000 a year. Starting in 2015, the commission grew to seven members. The budget committee voted to cut pay to $3,500 each, but the commissioners voted for $5,000 per commissioner, and $5,500 for the chair. The commissioners also rejected the committee’s vote to eliminate family health and dental insurance benefits worth up to $18,000 per person and approved individual health benefits worth about $8,400 per person.

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The towns, which provide 80 percent of the county’s $10.7 million budget, objected. Barrett said the towns’ wanted to keep compensation for the larger commission at roughly the same level as the three-member board.

Up to that point, Barrett said, budget committee members believed they had authority over budget issues.

“It was only after (the vote) that they said, ‘Oh by the way, we have legal opinion that we can do whatever we want.’ That just magnified the unhappiness,” he said.

After a wave of criticism, the commission voted to let voters decide in November on proposed charter language spelling out that the budget committee must approve any increase in salary and benefit changes for commissioners. Barrett said that language doesn’t go far enough, and the towns want the final overall budget authority to rest with the budget committee.

“It is our money, our tax bills and our taxpayers hold us accountable. Yet if we have a problem with something (in the budget,) the commissioners can ignore it,” he said.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday says it’s “an obvious conflict of interest” for commissioners to approve their own salaries, and asks the courts to order the commissioners to repay all their salaries and benefits that were not approved by the county’s budget committee.

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The suit also asks a judge to enter a permanent injunction against the county prohibiting it from paying salaries and benefits to elected county officials without first getting approval from the county’s budget committee.

“The fact that virtually every municipality, large and small, in Androscoggin County has joined together to sue the county and its commissioners speaks volumes about the extent to which they feel strongly that the county and the commissioners should not be approving their own budgets, salaries and benefits, and then just sending the bills to the municipalities and the taxpayers,” Sabattus Police Chief and Interim Town Manager Anthony Ward said in a statement.

The cities and towns in the lawsuit are Lewiston, Auburn, Poland, Lisbon, Turner, Durham, Greene, Sabattus, Minot, Leeds, Livermore Falls and Mechanic Falls. Only the towns of Wales and Livermore did not join. The defendants are county commissioners Elaine Makas, Ronald E. Chicoine, Matthew P. Roy, Randall A. Greenwood, Alfreda A. Fournier, Beth C. Bell and Sally A. Christner.

Historically, the county’s budget committee has voted on whether to approve commissioners’ salaries and benefits.

The lawsuit describes the legislative action in 2013 as a “power grab.”

“Although labeled a technical amendment, Chapter 62 perpetrated a substantial power grab, transferring final approval over the county budget from the budget committee to the commissioners,” the civil action states.

Lewiston City Councilor Mike Lachance, who is also a member of the county’s budget committee, said the commissioners have “spurned the representative voice of every municipality in Androscoggin County.”

Staff Writer Dennis Hoey contributed to this report.


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