AUGUSTA – Leaders shelved a state plan to take over Maine’s 15 county jails on Monday in place of a compromise that would keep the jails under day-to-day county control.

The plan would also create a new bureaucracy – a nine-member Board of Corrections – that would oversee budgeting and future jail expansion or construction.

Plans to lay off more than 100 people and close five local jails, including those in Franklin and Oxford counties, were also jettisoned.

The state has pledged to restore most of the $5.6 million in state community corrections funds earmarked for the counties but taken away under the original state plan.

The proposal also calls for the state to pick up the debt owed by counties for past jail construction.

In return, county jails across the state will board state prisoners at no cost.

In Androscoggin County, worries over the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in state revenue might now turn to thoughts of a boon to the county, which still owes more than $1 million on its 18-year-old jail.

“I’m just ecstatic,” Androscoggin County Commissioner Elmer Berry said Monday. “People from all 16 counties in Maine were part of this discussion. Everybody’s working hard together.”

The announcement prevented a battle.

The Maine Legislature’s Criminal Justice Committee had scheduled a public hearing for Monday. The competing state and county plans were to square off. Instead, they turned warm and fuzzy.

Corrections Commissioner Martin Magnusson and Waldo County Sheriff Scott Storey – political adversaries five days earlier – together unveiled an outline of their plan to the committee.

State and county leaders had begun meeting last Thursday and continued through late Saturday, gathering in person or via conference call.

“We all wanted the same thing,” Storey said. “I think we just had a difficult way of getting there.”

For the state, the measure would relieve crowding in Maine prisons. It would also unify the jails under a common system, one that could force big changes. The Board of Corrections would be able to reduce the beds at individual jails, change their missions or close them.

However, the counties and state would have equal representation, with two members each. And the majority of members, five in all, would work for neither the state nor a county.

They would be “critical thinkers,” as described in the new proposal.

Further details are yet to be worked out, but both sides seemed pleased by the progress.

With prodding by Gov. John Baldacci, Magnusson persisted to keep both sides talking, he said.

“I thought we could do better than either plan,” he said. “I had serious issues with both of them.”

Neither side became angry or bitter, Storey said.

“I think we have forged a new direction for corrections in the state of Maine,” he said.

John Lebel, administrator of the Androscoggin County Jail, agreed.

Though he was a critic of the takeover plan raised by Baldacci last August, he has been a proponent of change. Lebel has called for better cooperation between jails on issues of crowding.

“It’s definitely a step forward,” Lebel said. “Finally, we’d have a unified system.”

Baldacci also praised the move Monday with a prepared statement.

“The goal all along has been to create a new system that is more efficient, but that also delivers better rehabilitative services to the men and women in our care,” Baldacci said. “The agreement over the weekend took a good-faith effort by both sides, and I’m gratified that we are near a solution that will work for everyone, and especially Maine taxpayers.”

Jail compromise

• State would form a nine-member Board of Corrections to oversee all 15 Maine jails.

• Counties would continue day-to-day operation of jails.

• No jails would close immediately.

• State would take over debt service on all county jails, about $10.25 million this year, statewide.

• State inmates would be housed in county jails at no cost.