AUBURN — Most of the towns and cities in Androscoggin County filed suit Tuesday against the county and its commissioners, saying they improperly set their salaries and approved their budget in a way that violated Maine law.

Twelve of the 14 municipalities in Androscoggin County signed on to the suit filed in Superior Court on Tuesday, calling the commissioners’ move to set their own salaries a “power grab.”

The plaintiffs are Lewiston, Auburn, Poland, Lisbon, Turner, Durham, Greene, Sabattus, Minot, Leeds, Livermore Falls and Mechanic Falls.

According to the complaint, the County Charter requires that a budget committee made up of representatives from the municipalities approve both the budget and the commissioners’ salaries and benefits.

The complaint accuses the commissioners of “feathering their own nests” and asks for the return of all salaries and benefits not approved by the budget committee, according to a news release.

During spending deliberations for 2015, the budget committee cut commissioners’ salaries from $5,500 for the chair and $5,000 for other commissioners to $3,500 and $3,000, respectively. Commissioners voted 2-0-1 to overturn the cuts and approved a salary of $5,000, with a $500 boost for the chair.

The budget committee also voted to eliminate family health and dental insurance benefits, worth as much as $18,000 per person. Commissioners voted to restore individual health benefits worth about $8,400 per person.

Commissioners Beth Bell and Elaine Makas voted in favor of the salaries and benefits. Chairman Randall Greenwood abstained.

Since then, under the new County Charter, the commission has grown to seven members.

Named in the suit are Makas, Bell, Greenwood, Ronald Chicoine, Matthew Roy, Alfreda Fournier and Sally Christner.

“By disregarding a budget passed by a super-majority vote of the budget committee, the commissioners have spurned the representative voice of every municipality in Androscoggin County,” Lewiston City Councilor Mike Lachance said in a prepared statement. Lachance is a member of the county budget committee.

“Not only is this an unprecedented disservice to the taxpayers, jeopardizing the concept of checks and balances, it is likely a violation of state law,” Lachance said.

The complaint alleges that under state law, an independent finance committee must approve the county budget, and that without that approval, commissioners can only operate at 80 percent of the last approved budget. 

According to the complaint, the Androscoggin County Budget Committee has historically approved the county budget, including salaries and benefits of elected officials, a standard that was carried over when voters approved a new charter that took effect in 2013.

That year, according to the complaint, the county and its commissioners sought to change the charter to “transfer budget authority from the budget committee to themselves” by going to the Legislature for a resolve to amend the charter. The resolve, signed by Gov. Paul LePage, was done “with little, if any, notice to the voters and taxpayers who approved the charter or to the municipalities that finance substantially all of the county’s budget,” according to the news release.

At the time, the resolve was labeled a “technical” amendment under legislative rules, but the towns filing suit assert that the resolve “perpetrated a substantial power grab, transferring final approval over the county budget from the budget committee to the commissioners.”

According to the complaint, while commissioners “assured the budget committee and voters and taxpayers that the budget committee retained final authority over such salaries and benefits,” the commissioners instead “changed course and took it upon themselves to approve not only the county’s budget, but also their own salaries and benefits.”

The complaint calls the move by commissioners to approve their own salaries and benefits, and then pay those salaries and benefits without approval of the budget committee, an “obvious conflict of interest.”

The towns filing suit make a point in their complaint that there have been multiple attempts over a period of several months to resolve this dispute without resorting to legal action. Now, “in order to force defendants to comply with the rule of law and with the charter, and to prevent defendants from feathering their own nests, plaintiffs turn to this court for relief.”

The towns are seeking a declaration from the commissioners that they are not entitled to the salaries and benefits they approved, and to repay salaries and benefits they approved for themselves, calling their actions a breach of their duty to the public “by receiving salaries and benefits to which they were not entitled.”

The towns are also asking the court to declare that the county must get budget approval from the budget committee, not commissioners, in the future. 

“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,” said Sabattus Chief of Police and Interim Town Manager Anthony Ward in the written statement.

The towns are being represented by Lewiston attorney Peter Brann of Brann & Isaacson.

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