AUGUSTA — A bill to increase the number of Kennebec County commissioners from three to five has become a new partisan battleground in the increasingly purple county, pitting a newer Republican commissioner against two veteran Democrats.

County Republican officials have championed the bill, LD 1884, as a step toward more efficient governance, while Democrat commissioners and county party leaders have fought against the measure, calling it unnecessary and expensive. The two Democratic commissioners, Patsy Crockett, who represents the Augusta area, and George Jabar, who represents the Waterville area, voted to officially oppose the bill during a meeting earlier this month, while the lone Republican, Joe Pietroski, supported it.

When the bill came before the Committee on State and Local Government on Monday, legislators also split along party lines, with every Republican supporting the bill and all but one Democrat opposing it. The bill could soon head to the floor of the Legislature.

Pietroski, who represents southern and western Kennebec County, said he asked legislators to introduce LD 1884 — which would ask Kennebec County voters in a November referendum if they want to add two more commissioners — primarily because of quorum rules that bar a majority of the commissioners from discussing official business outside of public meetings. A quorum is a simple majority of a body of elected officials — in this case two commissioners — and is required for official discussion or votes to take place.

The constant risk of running afoul of that quorum rule, he said, has made county government inefficient.

“When it’s three (commissioners), if two people go somewhere and talk about any business that could, might or did come before the county commissioners, you’re in violation,” Pietroski said. “You are violating the principle.”

Adding two more commissioners could solve that issue and allow commissioners to bounce ideas off of each other, he said — an opportunity he said he especially wished he had during his first months as commissioner.

Pietroski said he’s heard similar arguments in Mount Vernon, a town Pietroski represents as a commissioner. Voters there chose to add two members to their three-person select board in a special town meeting last month and will elect those two extra members during their June 14 regular town meeting. Bob Grenier, the chair of the Mount Vernon Select Board, said in January that it had been difficult to conduct meaningful town business without breaking quorum rules.

Other counties have added commissioners in recent years, too. Most recently, Franklin County voted to jump from three to five in 2021.

Pietroski said that he thinks adding commissioners could help spread out the workload of a ballooning county operation. Since 2022, county spending has jumped by almost 80% from $14.3 million to $25.5 million, and Pietroski, who was first elected as a commissioner that same year, said the increasing budget numbers should come with increased supervision from elected officials.

Pietroski’s election in 2022 marked the beginning of a new political era in county government: He became the first Republican to be elected commissioner in 30 years, and GOP candidates won two other countywide positions in the following two years. Ronda Snyder, the Republican register of probate, and Matthew Boucher, the Republican register of deeds, both support the bill.

The Kennebec County Republican Committee did not respond to a request for comment.

But Democrats, who have held a safe majority of commissioner seats and other Kennebec County elective offices for decades, don’t want to see more members added.

Crockett, the chair of the commissioners who has represented the central part of the county since 2016, said the bill came up at the last minute and that she wanted more deliberation and public input before considering such a big change. She said the commissioners have worked well together for years as a trio and that she sees no need for the change.

“For 200 years, Kennebec County has operated with three commissioners, and we haven’t had any major problems — certainly not worse than any other county,” Crockett said. “We felt we always have gotten along together and everybody had an opinion.”

Crockett said she wasn’t even aware of the bill — let alone consulted — until Pietroski brought it up at the end of the commissioners’ May 6 meeting, when the commissioners voted 2-1 to oppose the bill. By then, a state legislative committee hearing had already been scheduled, and Crockett and Jabar — who has been a commissioner for 34 years — signed a letter to the committee opposing the measure.

“We are concerned that this legislation will increase bureaucracy, ineffectiveness and additional cost which will be borne by an already overburdened property taxpayer,” their letter said. “It is our belief that this measure would not be in the best interest of our county or its residents.”

The push to add two new commissioners, Crockett said, is merely a political effort to attempt to flip the commissioners’ majority to Republican as the party’s electoral fortunes in Kennebec County improve. A plurality of registered voters in Kennebec County are Republicans, making up about 33% of all voters. Registered Democrats make up about 31% of the county’s voters, and those unaffiliated voters make up about 30%.

Taxpayers are caught in the partisan crossfire, Crockett said.

According to an analysis from County Administrator Scott Ferguson, the addition of two commissioners could cost up to $116,000 more every year between paying the approximately $14,000 salary, providing benefits and remodeling county meeting spaces to accommodate more commissioners.

“You’ve seen what the citizens of Kennebec County have said: They don’t want an increase in taxes,” Crockett said. “And it just doesn’t seem like it’s necessary.”

Joanne Mason, the chair of the Kennebec County Democratic Committee, also opposes the bill — and so does her husband, independent Sheriff Ken Mason, who submitted written testimony against the bill earlier this month. Both say they think keeping costs down for taxpayers outweighs the need for adding more commissioners.

“Joe Pietroski has been given all the paperwork that the other commissioners were given prior to every meeting,” she said. “They have all the people that are in charge of all the offices, whether it’s the sheriff, the probate or so on, who are all available to read all that information ahead of time. They have reports. So, I’m sorry — I find that if he is not caught up to speed, it’s because of his lack of preparedness.”

For now, the future of LD 1884 is uncertain. It was approved in committee Monday by a 7-6 vote, but no floor discussion has yet been scheduled.

And even if the bill passed, Kennebec County voters would need to approve the measure in a referendum.

Pietroski said he hopes voters get a chance.