This is the first story in an ongoing series that examines how Maine and its communities have used the once-in-a-generation windfall from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. Stories will be published over the next few weeks, two years after President Joe Biden signed the legislation into law.
In the two years since the federal government rolled out $1.9 trillion in aid aimed at easing the economic burden of the COVID-19 pandemic, bigger Maine communities are lagging the U.S. in deciding how to spend it.
President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act into law in March 2021, giving Maine counties access to an unprecedented $260 million with about $240 million more set aside for cities and towns. Second and final installments were delivered last year. It must be budgeted by the end of 2024 and spent by the end of 2026.
Maine’s eight largest counties, plus the cities of Portland, Lewiston, Bangor, South Portland and Auburn, had only spent or finalized plans to spend about $84 million out of $318 million in aid, according to the latest available federal data through the end of September.
That was 26.5 percent of their total allocations, while larger New England communities had obligated 28.8 percent of their aid and those nationally were at 38 percent, according to a Bangor Daily News analysis. More money has been spent since then across the state, and those figures do not include rough spending plans.
The relatively slow rollout of federal stimulus money in Maine underscores the disagreement among local officials about how to spend it. Maine counties have fewer responsibilities than others across the country, yet they got the same shares of money. Some of them had to stand up unfamiliar regional processes to allocate aid that will run for the next year or two.
“All counties in Maine are kind of different,” Penobscot County Administrator Scott Adkins said. “Each one is unique, so how they approached this was different in each county.”
About a third of committed funds in these Maine communities so far went toward government services. The major projects in that category included a $9.5 million Cumberland County office building in Portland, $5.3 million for broadband expansion in Hancock County and $4.6 million for a new Androscoggin County sheriff’s office in Auburn.
These areas have put 15 percent of their aid toward COVID-19 prevention in congregate settings, such as jails, schools and dense work sites. That was well over the national average of less than 2 percent in large communities.
At the end of last year, Maine towns, cities and counties had set aside 8.9 percent of the funds so far committed in the state toward hazard pay for their employees, more than the region and country, which each had 3.5 percent.
A larger share in these places has also gone to premium pay bonuses for public employees and nonprofits than in the rest of New England and the country. For example, York County is sending $1.5 million to a Biddeford mental health service provider to open another location.
“Cumberland and York counties got right out in front of it, immediately,” Maura Pillsbury, a policy analyst at the liberal Maine Center for Economic Policy, said. “They had applications out for nonprofits and community organizations to apply for funds and start going through the process. They were really proactive about it.”
Cities and counties have been moving at different speeds on major issues. When Adkins was the Hancock County administrator, he said broadband was the big priority. When he moved to Penobscot County, he said the goals were different and centralized around funding projects that addressed issues with housing, mental health and drug addiction.
“I’ve never won the lottery, but you hear about it,” Adkins said. “It was very important, even though this is millions and millions of dollars, that each dollar was sent out with the intent for it to be as effective as possible because we all know that this is not free money.”
Last November, Bangor City Manager Debbie Laurie told the Bangor Daily News that the city was planning to move deliberately. It had not spent any money as of September but has since laid out a rough budget and committed $2 million to a YMCA expansion.
Pillsbury said she hopes local leaders will find ways to spend the rest of the money on new projects that will help benefit their communities. In particular, she said the communities need to focus on areas that will help people recover and rebuild from the pandemic.
“I think that it’s really important for them to listen to the advocates and the organizations working in their communities to help folks recover from the pandemic,” she said. “Really, anything that can help support folks most disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, in our view, that is what those funds were intended for.”