AUBURN — Negotiations between Androscoggin County commissioners and about 70 sheriff’s department workers — including patrol deputies, dispatchers and jail guards — will undergo fact-finding in hopes of breaking a 19-month-long deadlock.

Offers on both sides will be analyzed and assessed in a report that will eventually be made public.

“We are at a stalemate,” Commission Chairman Randall Greenwood said Friday. “Ending this is one of my highest priorities.”

The union contract expired just as Greenwood and his fellow commissioners — Elaine Makas and Jonathan LaBonte — took office at the end of 2008.

And that contract had merely been a one-year extension of the previous agreement, signed in 2005.

Earlier this year, the sides began meeting with a labor mediator.

“We’re wondering, ‘How long this can go on?’” said Sgt. Eric Samson, a member of the union’s executive committee. “We’re really trying to find common ground with the commissioners.”

When the current commissioners took office, both sides agreed to start from scratch. They also agreed not to disclose the details of the negotiations, holding their offers and counter-offers secret. Such disclosure is also banned under the expired contract, which remains in force until another is signed.

There have been countless closed-door meetings with lawyers. And there have been two votes.

Workers overwhelmingly defeated the first offer, Samson said.

“I think one person voted for it,” he said.

The second time, the mediator presented the contract offer to the rank and file.

“It failed unanimously,” Samson said.

Some workers have worn their frustration with the failures for all to see, receiving permission from the sheriff to protest the lack of a contract by growing beards or discarding uniform shirts for golf shirts.

“I think it’s possible to come to an agreement,” Samson said. Success will require movement by the commission, he said.

“It’s like, ‘We’ve got nothing more to give you,’” he said. “We’ve offered what we can.”

LaBonte disagrees.

“There’s a good offer on the table,” LaBonte said. “I’m very eager to get a contract concluded.”

But he worries that the county can’t move any closer to the middle, he said. Too few residents have not received raises in their private-sector jobs.

“We’re in a recession,” he said. “You can offer what you offer.”

Still, Makas is optimistic that both sides can find a solution, but they must keep talking.

“I don’t always get my way about what we have for dinner,” she said. “But I’m not going to stop eating.”

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