Most measures used to evaluate public officials are subjective, like background or ideology, for example.

Such variables are scrutinized because the actual criteria for holding an office are weak. The presidency has a minimum age, but mostly, the top criterion for any elected official is that he or she reside within the community they represent.

It is a quality we should take for granted, because to serve the public, the public asks for little else than residency.

Which brings us to the curious case of Helen Poulin, the Androscoggin County commissioner elected to represent Lewiston, but who since has moved to Auburn, a community represented by another county commissioner.

Poulin says her residency doesn’t matter until she is up for re-election, which is still two years away. She feels, and maybe rightly so, she can still serve her former constituents despite her new address across the river.

Yet this choice is not hers to make.

By moving to Auburn, Poulin has broken the basic compact an official has with the public: to reside where they represent and to represent where they reside. Whether she feels able to stay Lewiston’s commissioner is immaterial.

Since she no longer lives in the correct city, Poulin should resign.

A bigger problem, however, is nothing can force Poulin to do so. The law is clear – county commissioners must reside in their district – but there is no vehicle to enforce it.

In comments published today, Elmer Berry, the chairman of the County Commission, indicated he’s uninterested in asking Poulin to step down. No statutory method exists to recall county commissioners, either.

Unless Poulin exits voluntarily, she will remain Lewiston’s commissioner by proxy. This would be another failing of Maine’s broken county governance, which offers yet another compelling argument for its dissolution.

Our county government has a reputation for operating without accountability. It meets during the daylight hours in a windowless room in the County Courthouse. Most taxpayers only have vague notions of its duties.

The three county commissioners, particularly, have earned rebuke for practicing a belligerent brand of politics, which emphasizes asserting their power, rather than governing in the best interest of the public.

They have seemed sorely out of touch.

In this regard, Poulin is an opportunity. If she resigns, she and the commission would deserve credit for policing themselves and respecting the most basic responsibility of elected officials.

But if she does not, the commissioners will only prove they think the law does not apply to them.

This would turn a simple question of residency into questions about the necessity of county government.