DOT to cut up to $400 million from projects due to funding gap

The Maine Department of Transportation plans to cut up to $400 million from its planned projects due to a funding gap. 

According to a memo Transportation Commissioner Dale Doughty sent Gov. Janet Mills on May 18, the Maine DOT already delayed six paving projects — a total value of $50 million, with $10 million coming from state funds — and plans to make further decreases of $350 to $400 million.

The department will do so by cutting or delaying another $150 million in bridge, highway, intersection and multimodal improvements this month, at the start of Maine’s peak construction season, as well as cutting an additional $200 million or more from other projects planned for the state’s next three-year work plan. 

Doughty said the state faces new funding risks since the current three-year work plan was developed in late fall of 2025, including high fuel prices, fallout from the federal government shutdown in the fall, approaching deadlines for large grant projects, and what Doughty described as the most pressing issue: the state capital structural gap. 

That gap is now $130 million, down from $170 million in the fall of 2025. 

This is far from the first time Maine has struggled with transportation funding issues. 

The state’s highway fund, which is separate from the general fund, has long been a point of struggle for lawmakers. Lawmakers have attempted, though unsuccessfully, to combine the funds.

A few years back the state diverted various sales taxes that had previously funneled into the general fund to help boost the highway fund. But those taxes are now down and the outlook for the highway fund for the coming years is broadly negative.

Doughtry wrote in the memo that the only solution to the funding gap he sees is a series of annual or biennial general fund bonds “beginning as soon as possible.” 

“Without some relief I am concerned that a serious decline in our existing highway and bridge infrastructure is inevitable,” he wrote.