Updated: Disagreement Between Hancock County Officials Spills onto Social Media
by Bill Trotter/Bangor Daily News
ELLSWORTH—Hancock County officials Sheriff Scott Kane and Commissioner Bill Clark are feuding again, this time over the sheriff’s police dog budget.
But while Kane and Clark — who preceded Kane as county sheriff — have usually clashed during meetings of the county commission, this latest disagreement stands out because Kane went to social media to directly air his frustration over it.
Kane wants to fill one of the county’s two budgeted K-9 positions following the departure last month of Deputy John Stanley. Stanley, a certified K-9 officer paired with a trained police dog named Agent, accepted a job with the Winthrop Police Department and took Agent with him.
Kane sought approval from the county commission to use the funds the Winthrop Police Department paid to the sheriff’s office for Agent to help acquire a new police dog, but Clark is against the idea. Along with fellow Commissioner Sam DiBella, who was elected to the commission last fall and began his term in January, Clark voted last week to deny Kane’s request.
In response, the sheriff’s department questioned Clark’s commitment to Hancock County residents in a Facebook post late Monday afternoon.
“Commissioner William Clark opposed having two K-9s working in Hancock County and voiced his intentions to cut a K-9 position from the Sheriff’s Office, despite the budget allowing for two,” the department wrote. “It is clear that Commissioner William Clark has no intention of working with the Sheriff’s Office to do what is best for the citizens of Hancock County.”
The dispute is not the first time that Kane, who has served as Hancock County’s sheriff for the past 10 years, has publicly feuded with Clark, who served as sheriff from 1980 through 2014.
The two men have argued over the 2023 departure of former Chief Deputy Corey Bagley, who Clark claimed was forced out so Kane could offer his own brother the job. Last fall, Clark vocally opposed — without support from his two fellow commissioners — adding two more deputy positions to the sheriff’s budget, a proposal meant to offset declining patrols by Maine State Police, according to the Ellsworth American.
In 2021, Clark joined with the two other county commissioners to condemn the sheriff’s actions when Kane tried to cancel a contract Healthy Acadia had to provide recovery coaches to jail inmates over the organization’s support of Black Lives Matter. But Clark stopped short of calling for Kane’s resignation over the controversy.
According to the sheriff’s department, Clark was the only member of the commission last fall to oppose funding two K-9 positions when the 2025 budget was being drafted. The county’s appointed budget advisory committee, along with Commissioner John Wombacher and Paul Paradis — who was voted off the commission in November — all had supported Kane’s request for two K-9 positions.
The department’s other police dog, Finn, is partnered with Sgt. Travis Frost.
Kane said Tuesday, quoting a letter his department posted that day on Facebook, that over the past two years the two police dogs have responded to 73 calls ranging from tracking criminal suspects or people who are lost to helping with mental health calls, drug investigations and search warrants. During that same time, they assisted police departments in Bar Harbor, Bucksport, Ellsworth and Southwest Harbor, along with the Maine State Police.
Clark said Tuesday that while the sheriff’s department had two dogs prior to Stanley’s departure, that number was not set in policy. He said that when the sheriff’s department hired Stanley a few years ago, his dog came with him at a discount of $8,000.
To acquire a new K-9 and to get it fully trained with a new handler, Clark said, would cost more than $50,000.
“They have never had a two-dog policy,” Clark said. “It was the exception.”
Clark said the sheriff’s budget has consistently increased in recent years, and that it is the commissioners’ job to rein in spending to keep county taxes from going up too far.
“We’ve got to reduce their spending, and this is how I want to do it,” Clark said. “The sheriff’s department is not used to not getting what they want. They are going to have to live with what they’ve got.”
When contacted Tuesday about the Facebook posts, Kane said his departmental budget has increased from $1.56 million in 2020 to $2.72 million for 2025, which is a 74 percent increase. One reason for the bigger budget, he said, is that since 2020 the department has significantly raised its pay rates for patrol officers — with the support of Clark and other commissioners — to make the department competitive with what other agencies in the region are paying.
This year’s budget also includes two additional deputy positions because the sheriff’s department has been getting more calls since Maine State Police reduced its rural patrol coverage in 2019, though the state agency still conducts patrol throughout the county, Kane said. For example, from 2022 to 2023, the department’s call volume jumped by 21 percent, from 6,477 to 7,834, he said. Those additional deputy positions have not yet been filled.
“In order to have adequate staffing levels and be able to provide adequate service to the citizens of Hancock County, we requested two additional patrol deputy positions in our budget,” the sheriff said. “We feel that this is where we need to be to provide the level of service and security expected to the citizens of Hancock County.”
UPDATE: This story has been updated to include quotes from Sheriff Kane and a correction from the BDN where an earlier version of this report misstated the year when Maine State Police reduced the scope of its rural patrols.
This story appears through a media partnership with the Bangor Daily News. There have been minor modifications.
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