Prioritizing public safety, housing and savings, Gov. Mills releases $71 million budget proposal

Gov. Janet Mills proposed an additional $71 million to the biennial budget she passed last year in her supplemental budget released Wednesday, in which she prioritized funding for public safety, mental health, extreme weather preparedness, housing and child welfare. 

The supplemental proposal slightly increases the previous $10.34 billion biennial budget total to $10.41 billion. The supplemental budget comes after Maine’s nonpartisan Revenue Forecasting Committee last year projected an additional $265 million through Fiscal Year 2024-2025.

Mills described her budget as one that strikes a balance between investing in urgent needs, such as funding the gun safety proposal she announced in her State of the State address last month, and ensuring the state is on strong fiscal footing long-term. 

“I look forward to working with the Legislature in the coming months to arrive at a budget that protects our fiscal health and that makes prudent investments to support the health, safety, and welfare of Maine people,” Mills wrote in a statement Wednesday. 

In State of the State, Gov. Mills rolls out long-awaited gun safety proposal

Mills also proposes saving millions of dollars for future use, although Maine’s Budget Stabilization Fund, otherwise known as the rainy day fund, has reached a record high $968.3 million, which is also the maximum allowed under state law. 

Mills cited the projection that revenues will plateau in the coming years, and that other states are facing shortfalls, in defending her decision to propose saving $107 million in a new, temporary reserve for the 2026-2027 biennium.

Public safety and mental health

It is no surprise that public safety and mental health are top priorities in Mills’ supplemental budget. In her State of the State address last month, she told Mainers as much when dedicating much of her speech to the need to protect public safety in light of the mass shooting in Lewiston in October.

She’d also announced a forthcoming multi-pronged legislative approach, details for which she released in her budget proposal. 

Mills allocated $2.8 million to support mobile crisis teams in fiscal year 2025. These teams are dispatched to the location of a person experiencing a mental health or substance use crisis through 988 – Maine’s 24/7 centralized crisis lifeline – and are composed of specially trained behavioral health responders who de-escalate the situation and provide care in the least restrictive setting.

Safe firearm storage is another component of Mills’ plan. She proposed $200,000 in one-time funding to promote Maine’s Safe Homes Program. Created by the Legislature and Mills in 2022, the program encourages people to safely store firearms and highlights programs that make safe storage more affordable, such as available tax exemptions for devices specifically designed to secure firearms. 

Mills also provided funding to hire more law enforcement. She dedicated $5.5 million in her proposal to hire 32 state troopers of various ranks, including detective and sergeant positions, among others. 

Extreme Risk Protection Order Assessments, conducted when a person may pose a significant risk of causing personal injury to self or others, have increased since the Lewiston mass shooting, Mills said in her State of the State. In her budget, she proposes  $422,400 to support this work, citing that the law has been used 15 times more in the three months following the shooting than the previous three years. 

This funding is in addition to other proposals related to public safety that Mills had previously announced, such as establishing an Injury and Violence Prevention Program within the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention to keep all data on violence in one place and creating a Maine Mass Violence Care Fund cover physical and mental health expenses connected to a mass violence event that are not covered by insurance.

Extreme Weather 

When Mills was not discussing public safety during her State of the State, she was focused on the need to build resilience to extreme weather, following successive storms this winter that flooded Maine’s coastal and inland communities. 

Mills proposes investing $50 million into the Maine Infrastructure Adaptation Fund, with additional millions to bolster such efforts. 

It outlines $5 million to expand the Community Resilience Partnership, which currently includes 175 communities, to support another 100 cities, towns and tribal governments in creating local plans to address vulnerabilities to extreme weather. 

The budget also provides $15 million dedicated to the Disaster Recovery Fund to help the state pay the estimated costs from recent storms and $6 million to repair damage to state parks, historic sites and public lands. 

Housing 

Maine needs an additional 38,500 housing units of varying price points and sizes to meet the current demand, and at least 84,000 homes by 2030, according to a statewide study released this fall. 

Mills hopes to provide $10 million to the Affordable Homeownership Program, an amount that is estimated to help build more than 130 new homes in Maine, albeit a dent in the total number needed.

Much of the funding Mills proposed for housing, $16 million, would go toward emergency measures to ensure that winter warming and low barrier shelters as well as longer term shelters and transitional housing programs can remain open. 

Children

Maine’s failure to meet the needs of its youngest residents has been a recurring point of contention this legislative session. 

Mills proposed $1.4 million to expand teams for child caseworkers, who have reported poor working conditions and high turnover, which legislative proposals this year are also seeking to address. 

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Mills proposed an additional $1.3 million to support services for children in state custody, including funding for housing and clothing, as well as for a new foster child assessment service to evaluate youth entering foster care.

Her budget also dedicates $4 million to reclassifying child welfare positions to ensure compensation reflects the difficulty and complexity of the work. The pay gap between state employees and their private sector counterparts has also been an ongoing concern beyond child welfare among the unionized workers in state government. 

Other additions 

Beyond some of these big ticket items, the supplemental budget Mills outlined would allow for some other proposals currently making their way through the Legislature to be funded. 

For example, on Tuesday the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee unanimously voted in favor of a bill that would fully reimburse municipalities for revenue lost through Maine’s short-lived tax relief program for seniors. The committee also unanimously voted to exempt the bill from the Special Appropriations Table, and Mills’ budget would provide $15 million for the effort.

Another example involves the state’s youngest residents. The Maine Department of Education shared a proposal with the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee on Feb. 2 to restructure how preschool special education is provided, following decades of dissatisfaction. The committee has yet to put forth a bill to adopt the proposal, although will be discussing whether to do so on Thursday. Mills proposed $25 million in her budget to follow through on the plan.  

There are currently more than 140 pieces of legislation on the appropriations table with fiscal notes totaling well over $1 billion, and more bills added each week as the session progresses. With the governor’s proposal, the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee is tasked with prioritizing and amending proposals to fit within the overall supplemental budget. 

In a statement following the budget’s release, House Majority Leader Mo Terry (D-Gorham) praised the proposal for addressing “some of our state’s most urgent needs.”

“As the budget committee gets to work reviewing and strengthening this proposal in the coming weeks, House Democrats will be committed to advocating for more investments in housing, child care and our mental health system as we continue our work to build a better, safer state for all Mainers,” Terry wrote.

Legislative Republican leaders did not signal whether they support Mills’ proposed budget in a statement following its release.

“Similar to her prior budget requests, we look forward to reviewing it once final details become available,” the Republican leaders wrote.

This story was updated to include the responses from legislative leadership.