Washington County’s longtime treasurer tendered her resignation on Thursday in the middle of a fiscal crisis precipitated by years of poorly managed budgets.
Jill Holmes, a Republican from Jonesport who had served in the elected position since 1999, cited personal reasons for her departure, according to County Administrator Renee Gray. She stepped down the same day the Bangor Daily News ran a story about the financial problems.
The county recently revealed that years of budget mismanagement emptied its coffers, pushing commissioners to seek voter approval for an $11 million bond issue in a November referendum. The county ran out of money to pay its employees earlier this year, leading it to take out millions of dollars in loans to stay afloat. They must be paid back by the end of the year.
Between 2020 and 2024, county officials carried fiscal estimates from each year into the next year’s budget without verifying the funds were actually there. Compounding the problem, money from the federal COVID-19 stimulus package was placed in the general budget, making it appear that the county had more money than it actually did.
County staff and a new set of commissioners are trying to dig out of the mess while setting a budget for 2026. They have refrained from blaming any individual employee, but Commissioner David Burns said he hopes whoever comes on as treasurer will “make some better discernments” than Holmes, who did not respond to a call seeking comment.
Ordinarily, a treasurer’s resignation would temporarily leave the position to the deputy treasurer until Democratic Gov. Janet Mills could appoint a replacement treasurer. But Sondra Small, who is in that role now, is not interested in the treasurer position and is expected to resign from it while staying on as the finance director, Gray said.
If that happens, commissioners themselves will be able to appoint an interim treasurer until Mills ultimately replaces that person. A regularly scheduled election for the post will occur in 2026.
Holmes will still be involved in attempts to right the ship going forward, with Burns saying that the former treasurer has agreed to help commissioners “in any way she can.”
“And I take her at her word that she will,” he said.
Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural politics as part of the partnership between the Bangor Daily News and The Maine Monitor, with additional support from BDN and Monitor readers.
