AUBURN – Angry workers say Androscoggin County leaders backed out on a long-standing bargain last week, eliminating lifetime health care for the husbands and wives of deceased retirees.

“It’s huge,” said Sgt. David Trafford, president of the labor union inside the sheriff’s department. “Lots of people are angry. It’s very upsetting to me.”

Yet, county commissioners said Monday that the benefit never really existed.

Rather, it’s a change in how the county’s benefit package is interpreted, Chairman Randall Greenwood said.

On Thursday, Greenwood signed a letter sent to all retired employees, informing them of the change. The letter began arriving in mailboxes Saturday.

“It’s not a policy change,” Commissioner Jonathan LaBonte said. “It’s a new interpretation.”

The issue came up last week during closed-door meetings between county attorney Bryan Dench and the commission, Greenwood said. As commissioners examined the current labor contract, Dench questioned the practice of passing on the health-insurance-for-life benefit accrued by all ex-employees with at least 20 years in the state’s retirement system and eight years with the county.

It’s a rare benefit.

Commissioners ended the lifetime health care provision for elected officials, beginning in 2004. But it stuck for unelected workers.

Last week, attorney Dench told the current three commissioners, all of whom took office in December 2008, that the health care provision was never intended to extend to spouses after the death of the county retiree.

Not so, said former Commissioner Elmer Berry, who said he plans to research the change. He will likely be joined by ex-Commissioner Patience Johnson, who said she too was “surprised” by the letter and planned to research the matter.

As written, the current labor contract offers little help. It makes no mention of what happens after the employee dies.

“We’re making the right decision,” LaBonte said. “I have no doubt about it.”

To suggest that the benefit ought to be passed on without a clear, written agreement is “really a stretch,” he said.

However, Trafford and other longtime employees said Monday that they plan to attend the next commission meeting – scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 20 – to talk about the change.

Trafford, who has worked for the department for 16 years, said he has always understood that the benefit passed on to spouses.

“A lot of the guys see that as a big deal,” the union leader said. “It is very important to me.”

Without it, he believes many employees would have left the county, he said.

“When I came to the 10-year-mark, I thought about it,” Trafford said. Knowing that his wife would be cared for was incalculable, he said.

“We don’t have a lot of benefits,” he said. “But this is one.”

Commissioners have not figured up the savings from stopping the practice.