Breanna Pinkham Bebb, the new interim Waldo County Commissioner, is taking office as the county is in the midst of a grueling budget crisis. But she’s familiar with the terrain — as a member of the county budget committee, which is tasked with approving the county’s budget — she’s been immersed in the details of the county’s finances for months.
“I don’t think there’s any better way to understand what a government body does than to go line by line through their budget,” she said.
Bebb’s interim appointment runs until the end of 2026 but she intends to run for a full four-year term this November.
It is up to the three county commissioners to propose a budget that the budget committee will have final say over. The commissioners will meet on Tuesday for a special session devoted to the budget.
“I was willing to do this because I genuinely believe I can help,” she said.
Right now, the county is operating on 80 percent of its 2025 budget. In December, the commission proposed a 2026 budget that amounted to a 36% hike over 2025 and was met with public outcry. In January, commissioners proposed a slimmed-down budget that called for a 17% hike, but the budget committee sent them back to the drawing board.
They are currently working on a third proposal to present to the budget committee.
Bebb, 39, said she’ll work to propose a budget that is “responsible and sustainable.”
In the short term, the county could create an acceptable budget by relying on grant money or tapping reserves, she said. But she’s interested in a long-term fix.
“I’m not a believer in kicking the can down the road,” she said.
At the most recent budget committee meeting, some committee members said they’d like the increase to be under 10 percent.
“I don’t know that that’s realistic,” Bebb said.
Cuts of that magnitude would mean laying people off, she said. And cutting positions isn’t a surefire way to trim the budget — severance packages are expensive, she said, and it would be counterproductive to cut positions that may need to be filled again in the near future.
All three commissioners are dealing with problems that started before they took office. The county has been behind on audits — it only recently received the results of the 2022 audit. It is also saddled with an expensive, and unpredictable self-pay insurance plan. And the amount the county can cut from the budget is limited because much of the budget goes to pay for salaries and benefits that were negotiated in separate collective bargaining agreements.
The county also had several different finance directors in the span of a few years, each of whom used different accounting practices.
“I want to spend a lot of time on the here and now and the future,” Bebb said. “But the first order of business is to clean house in terms of accounting and the audits.”
She also wants to get bids from health insurance companies that would allow the county to move away from its current self-pay insurance program toward cheaper options. The county has attempted this in the past, Bebb said, but insurance companies refused to bid. She also intends to leverage relationships with companies and legislators to try to find a more affordable option, she said.
The good news, Bebb pointed out, is that Waldo County is not facing a budget shortfall like Washington and Somerset Counties.
“In Waldo County, there is money in the bank. But there are too many bank accounts,” she said, alluding to the county’s accounting difficulties.
Bebb grew up in Winter Harbor and Gouldsboro and graduated from the University of Maine at Machias. From a young age, she was in “all the clubs”. That hasn’t really changed.
“I get really passionate about what goes on in my community,” she said.
“Beyond our community, it’s scary and depressing and we don’t feel like we can do much about it, but at the local level we have a tremendous amount of opportunity to have an impact,” she said.
In Belfast she was the executive director of the non-profit Our Town Belfast, and served on the town’s Pedestrian, Biking and Hiking Committee and was on the boards of the Chamber of Commerce and the Waldo County Wood Shed, which helps provide firewood to people in need.
When Bebb moved to Northport 10 years ago she continued her community work. She started out on the planning board. She later won a special election for a Select Board seat, which she had to resign in order to take the position of commissioner.
As a select board member, Bebb helped secure funding for the Northport’s future town office and community center. Increasing the town government’s transparency and accessibility was a priority. She helped start a town newsletter — before that, people learned about a lot of town business from a sandwich board on the side of the road.
She also saw ways in which the county’s government could have done better. She was disappointed that towns didn’t have more say in how the county spent funds from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, which was intended to aid recovery from the financial impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.
When she became part of the Waldo County budget committee, her goal was to understand the budget process better so she could share that information with the people in her town, and to responsibly reduce the tax burden on residents.
People don’t always understand county government, Bebb said, but it shapes many parts of our lives.
“If you’ve ever been to the registry of deeds or gotten a passport or gone to probate court, if you’ve ever called 911 … you’ve interacted with county government,” she said.
Bebb was appointed to the seat left vacant when longtime commissioner Betty Johnson died in January. She said Johnson worked hard for what she believed in and inspired many people to get involved, too.
“I think that’s quite a legacy regardless of what part you’re a part of — to really put your muscle behind the things you believe in.”