AUBURN – No city councilor will lay claim to being behind the January leak of city manager candidate resumes.

At-large Councilors Ron Potvin and Bob Mennealy and Ward 2’s Bob Hayes all said Thursday they did not provide resumes to the Twin City Times last week. The weekly paper published candidate names from those resumes – including the name of Lincoln Town Manager Glenn Aho.

Aho withdrew from consideration for the Auburn job after the Bangor Daily News reported on the Twin City Times story.

The leak led Mayor John Jenkins to apologize on behalf of the city, and say that the level of details in the story meant that the information had to come from a city councilor.

Each of the four councilors contacted Wednesday denied being behind the leak. The remaining three said Thursday they were not to blame, either.

“Whoever divulged that information should be hung,” Mennealy said Thursday. But Mennealy said one of his council colleagues might not be responsible, after all.

“There were people in the audience, and it’s possible that they picked up that information on their own,” he said. “I would hate to think that a councilor was behind it.”

Jenkins said the council identified a group of about 15 citizens to help with the interviews, and each signed an agreement not to disclose the names of the applicants. Only city councilors had copies of the candidates’ resumes, Jenkins said.

Hayes agreed that the leaked material depended on having the resumes.

“But the process we used might be at fault, too,” Hayes said. “We all took a lunch break, and I can’t remember if (the councilors) all took their books of resumes with them. Someone might have looked at them while we were out of the room.”

Potvin said people besides councilors had access to the candidates’ resumes.

“It is possible that someone could have stumbled upon one of those books,” Potvin said. “I’m disturbed that someone did this, that someone violated a state law and violated the trust of the people of Auburn.”

Maine law, under Title 30-A, section 2702, which applies only to municipalities, specifically defines applications, resumes and letters of recommendation for job candidates to be confidential “and not open to public inspection,” making it illegal to release the records during the application process. Some application records may become public after the candidate is hired.