County officials are weighing whether to add additional deputy positions to the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office to offset a proposed change to a patrolling agreement with the Maine State Police.

The county’s Budget Committee is expected to review the proposed spending plan for the new budget year starting Monday.

While the committee, made up of municipal officials from across the county, has endorsed adding a deputy position a year for the last several years, this request is expected to be more than that.

Kennebec County Sheriff Ken Mason said his initial request had been for four additional deputies but the committee is expected to see a smaller number when it meets.

“It’s a significant increase,” Mason said earlier this week. “With the state police cutting back, which I understand, I’ve got to backfill. I can’t just hope that everything’s going to be OK, because that’s just not a plan.”

Kennebec County currently has 16 patrol positions, he said, which includes four sergeants who also patrol.

For more than two decades, the Maine State Police has had call-sharing or resource coordination agreements with county law enforcement agencies. Currently, eight such agreements are in force that spell out how the two law enforcement agencies work in the same geographic area.

In Kennebec County, the regional coordination agreement outlines patrol responsibilities. The county has been divided into six zones, with each agency alternately covering three zones.

“It is just the way things have worked for a long time,” Maine State Police Col. John Cote said. “Just by the nature of the way we do business, there are a lot of redundant services provided by state and county agencies.”

In the years since those agreements were first made, the state and its counties have undergone a number of changes, including population shifts and approaches to law enforcement.

“There are certain agencies at the county level that are very strong and robust and stand on their own,” Cote said. “And then there are other parts of the state where the counties really look to us to help, to work together for those daily calls for service.”

While a number of counties have added deputies, he said the Maine State Police is operating with the about the same number of troopers. Those troopers, Cote said, have taken on additional statewide responsibilities, including accident reconstruction, crisis management and K-9 teams that require them to respond.

When they do, said Lt. Patrick Hood at Troop D, whose territory includes southern Kennebec County, additional troopers are not available to fill in.

While state lawmakers have approved a handful of special positions — adding two detectives to handle cold cases, and both law enforcement and civilian positions to a computer crimes unit — they have not authorized spending on additional troopers.

Under the proposed agreement, the Maine State Police would scale back its commitment to cover two zones, but Cote said that doesn’t mean troopers will stop responding to calls in Kennebec County.

Mason said the balance of his proposed budget is essentially flat; he did not seek increases in other areas other than to request additional overtime funds.

“I know this is a significant increase in the budget, and I know during these times, it’s just not good because there are people out of work, but I have to do something,” he said.

Mason said discussions with the state police have been ongoing for several months, but this is not the first time a change in the agreement has come up.

In 2016, then-Sheriff Ryan Reardon said the state police had approached him about taking on an additional zone to cover, but he did not commit to taking that on.

At the same time, the sheriff’s office completed a staffing analysis that showed the need for five additional patrol deputies without taking on the additional patrol zone.

Kennebec County Administrator Robert Devlin confirmed that county budget officials have supported adding a deputy a year for the last several years.

In an unusual move a year ago, Devlin said, the budget committee agreed to fund a second patrol deputy position after Mason eliminated it. The committee also added positions in the Kennebec District Attorney’s Office.

As call-sharing agreements have been adjusted, Cote said some of the terms have changed. In one instance, the state police has agreed to respond to all fatal crashes. In Oxford County, where county officials terminated the call-sharing agreement several years ago, he said state police responded to the armed standoff in Hiram.

“That may be the only armed standoff in Oxford County in three years. But we deal with probably 50 or 60 of those calls a year,” Cote said. “It makes sense the state police would take the lead. It was a huge expense for us, but we’re not drafting an invoice to send to Oxford County.”

And some call-sharing agreements, like those in York and Waldo counties, are expected to remain the same.

“What we’re trying to do is get much more faithful about a yearly review of these,” Cote said.

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