MILLINOCKET, Maine — Maine Attorney General William Schneider has been asked to determine whether Gov. Paul LePage can legally withhold $216,000 in Sudden and Severe Impact funds from Millinocket.

Rep. Herbert Clark, D-Millinocket, said he is challenging LePage’s actions on behalf of the School Department and Town Council.

“I am requesting an official legal opinion from your office as to whether the Governor has the legal authority to intervene in the distribution of SIS funds if all of the other conditions specified in 36 MRSA 208-A are met,” Clark wrote in a letter to Schneider dated Thursday. “Additionally, why isn’t the Governor required to follow the law and what legal recourse does the town of Millinocket have in order to get the remaining SIS funds released?”

In a move she acknowledged as “hardball,” LePage spokeswoman Adrienne Bennett said Wednesday that LePage was allocating to East Millinocket and Millinocket $504,000 each in Sudden and Severe Impact funds, not the $720,000 Millinocket is entitled to, because Millinocket leaders broke an agreement to contribute $50,000 annually to the maintenance of the Dolby Landfill in East Millinocket.

She also accused Millinocket leaders of breaking their agreement.

Millinocket town councilors — in what one described as a handshake deal with the governor — said they agreed only to a one-year $50,000 payment and that LePage lied in claiming otherwise as part of an attempt to bully them out of funds the town deserves.

During Thursday’s council meeting, Town Manager Eugene Conlogue released more than 20 pages of correspondence between state and town officials that he said proved that Millinocket agreed only to a one-time $50,000 payment toward the landfill. In none of the documents do town officials speak of an ongoing partnership requiring annual payments.

On Friday, Bennett said state officials are assembling a timeline of documents, presumably to illustrate their side of what effectively is an ongoing negotiation.

The state’s agreement to assume ownership of the landfill last spring was a key element in the sale of the two Katahdin region paper mills and the restart of the East Millinocket mill in October. Engineered partly by LePage, that restart returned 216 jobs to the region.

Since then, LePage administration officials and leaders of East Millinocket and Millinocket have wrestled over who would manage the landfill.