Middlebury elected town officials are at odds over an alleged extra $30,000 in compensation paid to the town’s registrars over the last five years, with the First Selectman Jennifer Mahr arguing the town’s pay plan only provides for a set stipend, while her fellow selectmen argue the town has traditionally paid the registrars extra for the extra work they do to meet state mandates like early voting.
“More than $30,000 has been paid out over the last five years above and beyond the yearly stipend the Registrars are authorized by the Pay Plan, and with the approval of the former First Selectman,” Mahr wrote in a June 11 press release. “I have yet to determine if this was simply extremely poor administrative oversight or deliberate corruption.”
Mahr went on to indicate – and meeting minutes from prior Board of Selectmen (BOS) show – that at this time she is refusing to issue the additional payments invoiced by the registrars until the matter is more fully addressed.
Middlebury Democratic Registrar Francis Barton Jr., who in 2024 had lodged and then withdrew an ethics complaint against Mahr when she served as a selectman, threatened “legal action” for “the $992.00 you owe me for working on the town election for the Democratic Primary on 3/3/26 and the Town Budget Referendum on 5/6/26,” in a May 31, 2026, letter to Mahr.
“I requested that you pay me at the Board of Selectmen’s meeting, but the balance remains unpaid,” Barton wrote. “If I do not receive payment or a signed written agreement by the deadline, I intend to file a claim to recover the balance, court costs, and any other available relief.”
According to numbers presented to the Board of Finance on June 11, Democratic Registrar Barton, who took office in 2024 after the previous registrar stepped down, received $10,241 over the budgeted stipend between June 2024 and June 2026. The figures also show Middlebury Republican Registrar Nancy Robinson received $16,578 more than the stipend between June 2022 and June 2026.
Although the budgeted registrars’ salary for the 2025 fiscal year was $15,020, the list of payments shows the registrars collecting a combined $14,946 in salary, and then an additional $10,065 in “additional compensation” that year, largely from thousands charged for early voting and acting as poll workers. That same year, the Middlebury Board of Selectmen budgeted $10,000 for early voting, according to the town’s budget documents.
According to additional documentation included with Barton’s demand letter, the registrars were charging $31 per hour to work during the Democratic Town Committee Primary, in which Barton was a candidate, and during the Budget Referendum vote.
When combined with additional payments made to prior registrars, the total overage comes to $30,140 between 2022 and 2026, according to the numbers presented to the Board of Finance (BOF). First Selectman Mahr is arguing the registrars are being compensated for work that is already included in the registrar job description and therefore paid for by the stipend, and that elected officials should not be able to pay themselves hourly, particularly when other election officials are receiving much less.
“The question of how much compensation the Registrars should receive is appropriate for budget season,” Mahr wrote in her press release. “An elected official demanding compensation outside previously established limits and refusing to do the job he or she was elected to do unless receiving this unauthorized compensation cannot be tolerated.”
Although meeting minutes from the latest BOF meeting are not yet available, a statement on social media issued by former Middlebury First Selectman Edward St. John, indicated that much of the strife comes from the early voting state mandate that increased the cost of elections and the amount of work election officials must perform, and there is little evidence pointing to “corruption.”
“The central issue is not whether early voting created additional work for Registrars of Voters, Town Clerks, election workers, and support staff. It unquestionably did. The question is how municipalities were expected to absorb those additional costs, particularly when state funding proved temporary and incomplete,” St. John wrote. “Reasonable people can disagree about how election officials should be compensated, and whether compensation structures should be modified to address additional state-mandated duties. Those are legitimate policy questions. What is not productive is the use of insinuation or speculation regarding ‘corruption’ when the underlying circumstances involve a publicly discussed issue that municipalities throughout Connecticut have been struggling to address since the implementation of early voting.”
The debate over registrar compensation has roiled Middlebury BOS meetings for the last year, with the topic repeatedly being brought up and resulting in “lively discussion,” according to meeting minutes. Both Republican and Democratic selectmen argue the town should pay the additional compensation to the registrars and that the registrar’s job duties should be updated to account for greater responsibilities with the early voting law.
Selectman Vance had argued during past BOS meetings that it has been past practice to pay the registrars’ invoices and asked to use “undesignated funds” to pay the invoice, but Mahr argued that payments made to elected officials beyond the stipend would first have to be approved by the Board of Finance and called past practice of payment to the registrars in excess of the town’s pay plan an “illegal payment,” according to meeting the May 4 BOS meeting minutes.
Mahr called the past practice claims made by selectmen and BOF members “concerning,” in her press release and said their “reasoning violates the very principle underpinning the purpose of stipends in the first place: no elected official should self-determine what work is or isn’t covered by their stipend.”
During the latest June 15 BOS meeting, Vance said the early voting law was another unfunded mandate on towns by the state and they should seek to adjust the registrars’ pay to reflect that.
“We’ve never really talked about an unfunded mandate mandated by state government,” Selectman Vance said during the June 15 BOS meeting. “Our registrars of voters in the entire state are mandated to these changes and there are some communities that have a stipend and have an hourly rate, and I think we should look at that before we close this out and wait another year to try to rectify the problem.”
Vance went on to say the town’s job description for registrars, and their list of responsibilities, is antiquated considering the recent changes and technological updates to voting and the job description should be revised.
Mahr said there are two issues at hand: one was how much they should pay the registrars going forward and the other was the legality of the payments above the stipend that have been made in prior years.
“I’m not arguing that they shouldn’t be compensated for work that they did but they are not currently hourly employees and they are elected officials who get a stipend,” Mahr said. “Two years ago, when early elections came and there were more mandates for them to work at that time, the money for early elections should have been added to their stipend amount and it was not. That’s unfortunate but it is the decision that was made at that time.”
The Middlebury BOF decided to address the overpayment issue at their next meeting in July, and Mahr said her statement that she will continue investigating.
“Government accountability is not optional,” Mahr said in the press release. “Public office carries responsibility, and public confidence is earned through transparency, adherence to process, and respect for taxpayer dollars. Taxpayers deserve a full accounting of what happened, and my office will pursue this investigation.”
Neither town registrars returned Inside Investigator’s email requesting comment.
**This article incorrectly identified Edward St. John as a current Board of Finance member**
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