Over the course of Maine Gov. Janet Mills’ six years in office, her administration has handed out millions of taxpayer dollars to dubious and in some cases outright absurd initiatives through no-bid contracts.
The expenditures, required to be disclosed by the state as Mills administration waived the competitive contracting process in order to make them, range from supporting “chestfeeding” with plus-sized nursing bras, race-based tourism to the state, training students in Maine’s failing public schools to be climate change activists, and paying media outlets for positive coverage.
Vaccine Marketing Campaigns, “Chest-feeding” and “Safe Consumption Sites
Over the last eight months alone, the Mills administration authorized nearly a million dollars in no-bid contracts to controversial “health care” initiatives of dubious merit:
[RELATED: Mills Gives $130,000 No-Bid Contract to Spread False Info About COVID-19 Vaccine]
July 2024: Mills administration pays the Maine Association of Broadcasters $130,000 for a public service announcement (PSA) campaign pushing Maine parents to get their children vaccinated, while falsely claiming that COVID-19 vaccines prevent infection.
December 2024: Maine CDC makes a $50,000 taxpayer-funded purchase of larger size nursing bras that they say will help support both breastfeeding and “chestfeeding” for “birthing parents.”
February 2025: Maine CDC makes an additional payment of $500,000 — for a total of $700,000 — to extend its marketing campaign to “decrease hesitancy” towards COVID-19 and flu vaccines.
[RELATED: Maine CDC Awards $90,000 Grant to Combat Diabetes in Portland’s Immigrant Population]
December 2024: Maine CDC pays the Portland-based Maine Access Immigrant Network $90,000 to form a stakeholder group that will work on strategies to combat diabetes among the city’s “new Mainers” from Africa and the Middle East.
[RELATED: Mills Admin Proceeds with $15,000 Study into ‘Safe Consumption Sites’]
September 2024: Gov. Mills’ Office of Policy Innovation and the Future (GOPIF) grants $15,000 to a Portland-based consultant to coordinate a study of the potential effectiveness of “harm reduction health centers,” also known as safe drug consumption or injection sites.
Climate Change Initiatives and Education
To further public support for its “green energy initiative” and education, Mills supported a raft of projects all exempted from competitive bidding, the largest ticket item of which being a $120,000 payment to the state’s largest newspaper chain for positive coverage about its work on education:
October 2024: The Maine State Library spends nearly $13,000 in taxpayer funds to create a toolkit meant for “caregivers” to teach children about “climate change and climate action.”
December 2024: GOPIF pays $12,500 to a California-based nonprofit that will advise state agencies on how to transition all Maine K-12 public schools to zero carbon emissions in order to address the “changing climate.”
February 2025: GOPIF pays a Brunswick-based nonprofit organization $8,844 to fund educational conferences and for students to organize climate change activist groups at Maine schools.
[RELATED: Maine Department of Education Wants to Spend $23,500 on ‘Happiness Expert’ Motivational Speaker]
June 2024: Maine Department of Education spends $23,500 on having a “Happiness Expert” motivational speaker speak at an event celebrating the department’s Maine Online Opportunities for Sustained Education (MOOSE) program.
September 2024: Mills administration pays $120,000 to the Maine Trust for Local News — owner of the Portland Press Herald and Lewiston Sun Journal — to publish state-sponsored articles praising the Mills administration’s use of federal education dollars.
Race-based Tourism and Other Absurdities
Of all the recent no-bid contracts, the highest-dollar proportion have gone towards what can best be described as advancing a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) agenda, much of it at the same the federal government was reversing its course on such initiatives:
December 2024: The State of Maine’s Office of Tourism awards a $165,000 grant to a black travel influencer as part of a marketing campaign aimed at attracting more “diverse visitors” and “Black travelers” to Maine.
December 2024: Maine’s racial equity board, the Permanent Commission on the Status of Racial, Indigenous & Tribal Populations (PCRITP), pays $7,000 to sponsor walking tours about the “historical struggles and contributions of Black individuals” and to dispel the myth that the state is “too old and too white.”
August 2024: Maine’s Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD hands out $2.7 in grants on efforts to attract “racial, ethnic, and linguistic minorities” into the state’s workforce.
[RELATED: Mills Admin Hires ‘best professional cheat’ in Casino History to Advise Maine Casino Inspectors]
December 2024: The Maine Department of Public Safety pays $12,000 to hire the “best professional cheat” in casino history to train the state’s casino inspectors, table game supervisors and other casino staff.
The Maine Wire will continue to cover the Mills administration’s use of no-bid contracts, especially as the state faces new austerity concerns with a half-billion dollar hole in the latest budget the governor proposed earlier this month.
