AUBURN – Androscoggin County leaders may unveil a revised budget Wednesday – including a partially restructured sheriff’s department – as they race against a perceived end-of-year deadline mandated by state law.

Yet, it’s a race not everyone is running.

In November, the county Budget Committee voted to postpone work on the controversial 2007 spending package, which included tax hikes, layoffs and furlough days. The 11-member committee planned to revisit its work in January, following the inauguration of sheriff-elect Guy Desjardins.

However, attorney Bryan Dench told the County Commission that finalizing the budget by year’s end is mandated by state law.

“The deadline in the statute is mandatory, not optional,” Dench said in a letter to the commission.

“We didn’t realize,” Elmer Berry, chairman of the three-member commission, said Monday. It leaves the county little choice but to act.

“We all have to comply with the law,” Berry said Monday. “White is white and black is black.”

However, Budget Committee Chairman Michael Bowie said he sees shades of gray.

He disagrees with Dench’s interpretation of the law, saying that past committees have run the process into the following year without dire consequences.

“It’s not like we’re stopping the county from running,” Bowie said Monday. He has agreed to call together the committee for a meeting with the commission Wednesday night, as Berry requested.

But the committee may not pick up where it left off. Rather than discussing the sheriff’s department budget, Bowie wants to talk about the legal opinions and iron out the differences between the Budget Committee and the commission.

The meeting is tentatively scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Superior Court Room of the Androscoggin County Building.

Discussion over the sheriff’s department budget may wait.

“We put the hearings on hold to give the sheriff-elect time to come up with a budget,” Bowie said.

As of Monday afternoon, that budget was still unfinished.

“I think we’re 99 percent there,” Desjardins said.

Since the Nov. 15 postponement, the sheriff-elect has been working with department heads and rank-and-file workers on nights and weekends to come up with a new spending plan, he said.

“We’ve had some good recommendations and 100 percent commitment from everyone,” said Desjardins, who declined to discuss specifics of the work in progress.

He did say, however, that it will include a partial restructuring of the department. Some people’s jobs would change, he said.

There was no word about whether layoffs, targeted in the sheriff’s department, were still likely.

The County Commission budget proposal calls for a modest spending increase of 3.49 percent, from $9.88 million in 2006 to $10.2 million in 2007.

However, last year’s budget was offset by more than $700,000 in county savings. This year, with no savings to absorb the increase, taxes paid by towns and cities would jump by more than 10 percent. To find savings, commissioners called for wage freezes and five furlough days for many nonunion workers.

The commission flat-funded several departments, including the District Attorney’s office, and cut aid to groups typically aided by the county.

For instance, the Androscoggin Valley Soil and Conservation District saw its allotment fall by 10 percent, from $8,500 this year to $7,650 in the coming year.

Meanwhile, the commission targeted six union employees for layoffs: five corrections officers in the jail and the only full-time civil deputy.

On Nov. 15, the same day as the postponement, outgoing Sheriff Ronald Gagnon unveiled a budget change that would have returned two of the jail workers. It also slashed the role of chief deputy to a part-time job and opened the door for cuts to the sheriff’s salary.

Desjardins has vowed to maintain the chief deputy’s job as a full-time position.

Desjardins said he hoped to release a proposal by the end of the week.

“I feel comfortable with it,” he said. “I’m optimistic.”