Maine voters rarely get more than one name to pick from when they elect county treasurers. But voters in three counties want to keep picking anyway.
York, Franklin and Washington county voters appear to have rejected referendums on Nov. 3 that would have let county commissioners appoint treasurers instead. Some small towns have still not reported results, but roughly 70% of voters in each county were poised to vote the change down.
The proposals were meant to professionalize an office that oversees the finances of each of Maine’s 16 counties. State law does not require treasurers to be accountants or have any financial background. These obscure offices have drawn scrutiny of late amid local tax revolts and major governance issues in a handful of counties.
Both have happened in Washington County. A multimillion-dollar budget shortfall last year left the county scrambling to pay its debts and narrowly avoiding an unprecedented default.
Commissioners weighed a 40% tax increase and asked voters to approve $11 million in borrowing to dig out. They placed much of the blame on longtime Treasurer Jill Holmes, who they said mismanaged funds and moved $400,000 from the Unorganized Territory fund into the general fund in violation of state law.
Holmes retired last fall as the scope of the crisis became clear. She had run unopposed since the late 1990s. The county’s last contested treasurer’s race was in 1992, when Holmes lost.
Treasurers have long been elected in most of Maine’s counties, but state law allows counties to hold referendums to allow commissioners to appoint them. Three counties have made this change. Knox County voters were the first to allow commissioners to appoint treasurers after a 2004 vote. In 2012, voters in Cumberland and Androscoggin County did the same.
After Washington’s crisis, county commissioners decided to ask voters whether to begin appointing treasurers.
After the crisis, commissioners decided to ask again.
“Anybody who’s going to be running the finance department needs to have a lot of qualifications in this day and age, and we wanted to make sure that that person was not just elected because of name recognition,” Washington County Commissioner David Burns, a former Republican state senator from Whiting, said.
But commissioners said recent steps to professionalize the county’s finance department have taken some of the burden off the treasurer, making it less essential that the person in the role be a qualified hire. Commissioner Courtney Hammond said he ultimately voted against the referendum he helped put on the ballot.
“We don’t really need a full time, you know, hands-on day-to-day treasurer,” Hammond said.
York County commissioners put the question forward even though voters there rejected abolishing the elected position in 2018. The job is largely symbolic in York, which cut its treasurer’s salary to $500 a year after setting up a county finance office.
Commissioner Justin Chenette, a former Democratic state senator from Saco, said he opposed the change for reasons similar to Hammond’s.
“The role of the elected treasurer has been diminished because of a strengthened financial management operation and full-time staff,” Chenette said. “From my perspective, the public should still be able to pick that individual if we’re going to keep the role.”
Few people seek the job anywhere in Maine. Only three of the 13 counties that still elect treasurers had more than one candidate on the ballot this year, and that was an improvement. In 2014 and 2022, only one county had a contested treasurer’s race.
Kennebec County had two candidates for treasurer this year for the first time this century. Aroostook County hasn’t had a contested race for the job since 1994, and Piscataquis County hasn’t had one since before 1986.
Washington County voters may want to keep picking their treasurer, but they won’t get to anytime soon. Nobody ran for the job this year. Commissioners say the process for filling the spot is unclear, but the governor may have to appoint someone.
Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural government as part of the partnership between the Bangor Daily News and The Maine Monitor, with additional support from BDN and Monitor readers.