Androscoggin County commissioners know how to talk when they want to.

Elmer Berry, Patience Johnson and Constance Cote – the commissioners – recently declined invitations from local municipalities to discuss the county’s 2007 budget. Johnson told the Sun Journal an Oct. 30 public hearing – which only lasted for 12 minutes, according to the county – had already offered the opportunity for input.

“If people had questions, they could have attended that meeting,” she said, despite a mere 72-hour window between the commission’s completion of its budget review Oct. 27 and the hearing.

Sadly, we have come to expect this from counties, the anachronistic middle-managers of Maine government. They are attacked annually for their low profiles, yet offer blanket rejections when invited to talk about their budgets to those who fund it.

It’s a wonder we need them at all.

In response, Androscoggin County municipal administrators are reviving the notion of a charter commission to re-make the county. Curt Lunt, administrator in Lisbon, said the county’s budget clam-up is bizarre, and shows the need, finally, for a professional to manage its day-to-day business.

Commissioners should agree. After all, each of them are on record as vocal proponents for reform.

Cote, following her selection as commission chairman in January 1998, advocated for reform through a county charter. In June 2003, Berry and Johnson supported a charter and hiring a professional administrator, respectively.

“I think if we seriously consider [a charter] we would be doing a service to the taxpayers of Androscoggin County,” Berry said then. Johnson added, “I think whether we have a charter or not, it would save us money to have an administrator.”

Instead, taxpayers in Androscoggin County today still entrust a $9 million budget with three part-time elected officials, who won’t speak to towns when invited, and who fail to even maintain a Web site for public access to budget documents or meeting agendas or minutes.

This is hardly good government. It could, possibly, be one of the worst.

Even though previous efforts for either a charter or professional administrator have failed, the ideas still have merit and should be revisited. Voters rejected an Androscoggin County charter in 1991.

Cumberland County, with 265,000 residents, has an administrator. Aroostook County, at 6,453 square miles, has an administrator and charter. So does tiny Knox County, which has 39,000 people within its 374 square miles. Kennebec and Penobscot counties are also guided by professional managers.

Androscoggin – with more than 1,000 squares miles and 104,000 people – has the size and population that warrants professional leadership and re-organization.

In 1997, a state report on “intergovernmental relations” found Androscoggin County towns could save 66 percent off the county’s $4.6 million tax levy if it reformed along certain aggressive guidelines. Little happened, and now Androscoggin County is proposing to collect more than $7.4 million in 2007. Reform efforts must re-start.

If commissioners live up to their past statements, we could overlook their current silence.