Every two years, Maine lawmakers spend months hashing out a budget, deciding how to disburse the money coming into state coffers. The state operates on a biennial budget, with a fiscal year that runs from July 1 to June 30 of the following year. Fiscal year 2025, for example, began on July 1, 2024 and ended on June 30, 2025. The current fiscal year is 2026.
The process begins with the governor, who introduces a budget document that is then transformed into a bill with help from the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee, which takes input from the public and various policy bodies and committees. Eventually, the bill heads to the full Legislature, which must approve it before the next fiscal year begins on July 1, in order to avoid a shutdown of state government.
The budget can be altered if lawmakers decide there’s a need (such as changes in revenue, federal support, economic conditions) or desire (changes in priorities, technology, opportunities). This is done via the “supplemental” budget process. Maine requires that the budget be balanced, meaning that the state’s expenditures cannot exceed its available resources.
The charts below, compiled from thousands of pages of budget documents, offer a detailed look into how Maine has spent its money since 2016.
In the past decade, Maine’s budget has gone up 77 percent, jumping from $8.2 billion in fiscal year 2016 to $14.5 billion this fiscal year, 2026.
Three departments — Health and Human Services, Education and Transportation — have consistently made up the largest share of the budget, with DHHS (formerly DHS) accounting for nearly half of state spending this year, and more than 40 percent in years past.
In the 2016-2026 timeframe, the transportation budget saw the most significant increase of the three largest departments, from $569.8 million in FY2016 to $1.4 billion this year, an increase of 140 percent. The budget for DHHS also more than doubled in that timeframe, from $3.5 billion in FY2016 to $7.1 billion this year, while the education budget went up 57 percent, from $1.4 billion in FY2016 to $2.3 billion this year.
The three largest departments are also the only state departments with budgets of more than $1 billion.
Most state offices and departments have budgets under $100 million, while a few — including the Departments of Corrections, Administrative and Financial Services, Labor, Environmental Protection and Board of Trustees of the University of Maine System — fall between $100 million and $1 billion.
According to the Maine Center for Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, the state, like most others, is a “net receiver” of federal money, meaning it gets more in federal funds than it pays in taxes.
The vast majority of federal money coming into state coffers goes to just five departments: Health and Human Services, Transportation, Education, Labor and Administrative and Financial Services.
That could change as the Trump administration makes sweeping cuts to federal funding, but for the current fiscal year, financial officials are projecting roughly the same support for the state’s five largest recipients of federal funds.
Alexia Partouche, Will Sytsma and Alana Parker from the Investigative Reporting Workshop contributed to this report. Additional research from American University’s Spring 2025 Data-Driven Journalism class: Owen Auston-Babcock, Hannah Campbell, Maya Cederlund, Julia Comino, Asa M. Cumming, Conor S. Gillingham, Grace L. Hagerman, Elizabeth S. Haley, Lillian Juarez, Maria Lawson, Mohamad Zaid Mastou, Dana Munro, Alana Parker, Alexia Partouche, Ella Robinson, Nicole Spirea, Connor P. Sturniolo and Abigail Marie Turner.
