AUBURN — Randall Greenwood may have to decide between elected positions.

For six years, Greenwood has served as chairman of the Androscoggin County Commission, and he has two years left on his term.

But Greenwood last week earned a seat in the Maine Legislature, winning the contest to represent Wales, Monmouth and Litchfield in Augusta. And long-standing rules would prohibit the Wales Republican from serving in both posts.

“Our position is that it’s a conflict,” said Matthew Dunlap, Maine’s secretary of state. “We’ve always gone by the understanding that once you get above town government, it’s one office at a time.”

But that could change.

Dunlap said Thursday he was looking at the legal foundation of the rule and at changes in the relationship between state and county government, to see whether the old rules still apply.

“We’ll take a deeper look at it and make sure we’re not just giving an automatic, canned answer to the same question we get all the time,” he said.

He plans to issue a final opinion before Dec. 3, the day Greenwood is scheduled to take the Legislature’s oath of office.

“We’ll expedite it,” Dunlap said.

Greenwood hopes to have resolution soon. It’s a fuss he was hoping to avoid.

When he was elected to the county office in 2007, Maine law forced him to resign from his post as a Wales selectman. Before running for the Legislature, he called the Secretary of State’s office to make sure there would be no conflict.

A worker told him there was none, he said.

However, in the weeks leading up to the November election, Dunlap’s office told him there might be a problem. The office sent along the state’s most recent finding on the issue, a 1985 opinion signed by James Tierney, Maine’s attorney general at the time.

Much has changed in county government since then, Greenwood said. In 2001, laws were passed that ended the need for each county budget to be approved by the Legislature. And in Androscoggin County, the new charter took away commissioners’ ability to set their own pay and transferred it to the county budget committee.

“To me, that is a key factor,” Greenwood said.

Besides, members of the Maine Legislature populate many municipal councils and boards of selectmen throughout the state, he said.

“There is no difference,” Greenwood said.

Dunlap said his own ruling may not settle the issue for good.

“It might take a court challenge to sort it out conclusively,” he said.

Greenwood said he would unlikely spend the money needed to fight a prohibition. Rather, he’d resign from the County Commission.

Greenwood represents the towns of Durham, Greene, Leeds, Lisbon, Livermore, Livermore Falls, Sabattus, Turner and Wales on the commission. Under the newly expanded commission, Greenwood would represent Lisbon, Sabattus and Wales.

If he resigns, a Republican caucus will be held with representatives from those three towns to choose a new commissioner, said Richard Gross, chairman of the Androscoggin County Charter Commission.

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