AUGUSTA — As Androscoggin County leaders made pleas to the state for emergency repairs to the roof of the Auburn jail and a scrubbing of its dirty ducts — which set off smoke alarms — representatives of Maine’s county jail system threw up their hands over the governor’s planned budget cuts. 

The group that oversees Maine’s 15 county jails has been told to submit a plan for slashing $335,513 from its two-year budget, which began July 1. The plan is due Friday.

“At what point do we go to the governor’s office and say we were underfunded from day one?” asked Amy Fowler, a member of the Board of Corrections working group that met Wednesday. “We can’t secure any cuts at this point.”

Even without a cut, the jail system might be operating in the red before the end of the next fiscal year, said board member Peter Crichton, who also serves as Cumberland County’s manager.

“We’re in a situation where I don’t know if we can afford to give back any money,” Crichton said.

The eight-member working group, which advises the Board of Corrections, voted to recommend cutting nothing.

The vote came moments before counties began their pleas for capital projects: Aroostook County needed new vans to transport inmates, said its sheriff. Washington County needed lower ceilings. Requests were made for dishwashers and electrical upgrades, fences and freezers.

Randall Greenwood, chairman of the Androscoggin County Commission, and Sheriff Guy Desjardins made their pleas, too.

Topping the list was cleaning the miles of air ducts in the jail. Though it’s recommended to happen every five years, the work hasn’t been done for seven years. It’s led to false alarms in the 21-year-old jail on Pleasant Street in Auburn.

“It’s definitely something we have to do,” Desjardins said.

The roof is also a priority, Greenwood said. He has shared video of the roof”s worn shingles with state experts.

It’s not leaking, yet. But it could start anytime, Greenwood said.

Given the money situation, the state group made no promises of new vehicles or fixed roofs.

Statewide, Maine’s jails are projected to spend just under $80 million this year. Most of it comes from property taxes. In Androscoggin County, that means $4.2 million of the jail’s $5.5 million budget came from local resources.

But a growing share comes from the state.

Maine adopted its “one Maine, one system” approach to jails in 2009 as a way to ease the burden of local property taxes. County spending at each jail was capped at 2009 levels and the remaining part of each county budget was to be raised by the state. Any savings across the system, created by sharing resources and, in some cases, changing the mission of jails, would be passed on to all of the jails in the system.

But money has been scarce.

Since the system began, jails in Franklin and Oxford counties were reclassified as 72-hour holding facilities and the Androscoggin County jail became a pretrial facility, holding people until their sentencings. Populations and budgets are overseen by the Board of Corrections, an arm of the state’s Department of Corrections.

Eventually, there will be a price to pay, warned board member Mark Westrum, who also serves as administrator of Two Bridges Regional Jail in Wiscasset.

“The problem with all of this is that at some point, we’re going to have to make an investment to realize savings,” he said. If nothing changes, programs will be cut. Conditions in Maine’s jails will worsen, he said.

“At the rate we’re going, we’re going to go right back to a warehousing mentality,” he said.

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