Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) announced a $71 million new spending proposal on Wednesday that would bring Maine’s total spending for 2024-2025 to more than $10.41 billion, the most state government has ever spent over a two-year period.
In an email detailing the proposed spending, the Mills Administration said money would be allocated to address issues of public safety and mental health in the wake of the Oct. 25 Lewiston mass shooting.
Echoing Gov. Mills rhetoric from her “State of the State” speech last month, the administration said much of the massive spending package would go toward “climate change” related projects.
The massive spending bill would also allocate $16 million in additional taxpayer dollars toward “emergency housing” programs that have primarily been used to provide shelter to non-citizen migrants and asylum seekers.
Maine’s K-12 government run schools, which have been dogged by decreasing student test scores for years, would also see a $22.6M boost in taxpayer funding.
Among the biggest winners in the spending package, though, will Maine’s nonprofit hospitals, which are slated to receive an additional $11.4 million from Maine’s General Fund ($34 million total) to help attract and retain healthcare workers.
Attracting and retaining healthcare workers has been a hot button issue in Maine ever since thousands of healthcare workers were fired or left the industry in response to Mills COVID-19 injection mandates.
Maine’s hospitals can also look forward to another $96.4 million — which the Mills administration says will come from combined “Federal, state [taxes, and] new hospital revenue.”
“The supplemental budget is a balanced, prudent, and responsible proposal that advances the Governor’s long-held belief that we must continue to tackle pressing needs while ensuring fiscal sustainability in the long-run,” said Kirsten Figueroa, Commissioner for the Department of Administrative and Financial Services.
The budget allocates $2.8 Million for “Mobile Crisis Teams” comprised of “behavioral health responders” meant to aid people during mental-health crises, and provide aid for people suffering from substance abuse.
The bill also provides $200,000 to support programs making safe gun storage more affordable, and over $400,000 in support of Maine’s “yellow flag” laws, which allow firearms to be removed by a judge from people who are deemed to pose an “extreme risk” after a mental health assessment.
The budget would also allocate $5.5 Million for the hiring of 16 additional State Police Troopers, intended to allow state police to continue rural patrols in areas which do not have a local police presence.
Mills’ proposal would also allocate $6 million to repairing damages from the devastating December storms.
In total, the supplementary budget would require the state to appropriate and additional $71 million from taxpayers, raising the 2024-2025 budget from $10.34 billion to $10.41 billion.
Since Mills took office in 2019, Maine’s budgets have continued to break spending records, thanks in part to unprecedented levels of federal transfers to state coffers.
Despite the record levels of state government spending, Maine has one of the highest poverty rates in the country (10.8 percent), while neighboring New Hampshire’s 2022 poverty rate was just 7.2 percent.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="25616 https://www.themainewire.com/?p=25616">1 Comment
Hundreds and hundreds of children of illegals who speak no or little English and show up when they feel like it driving down grade averages along with woke dei agendas are not going to be fixed with more of our money.
Mills and the liberals have made poverty Maine’s largest industry.