Question 1: How much did travel cost the state last year?
The State of Maine spent $25 million on employee travel in 2023.
That number includes chartered flights and jet fuel, hotel rooms for legislators, car rentals, plane rentals and much more.
The Department of Health and Human Services was the biggest spender ($1.7 million), mostly for reimbursing employees’ gas mileage.
The Judicial Department spent $1 million. The Legislature spent $765k.
Question 2: How much of that money went to hotel stays?
Hotel rooms cost just over $1 million last year.
The three largest bills were all from the Judicial Department, including a $43,000 charge for a stay at
Sunday River Resort in Oxford County: “a four season resort in the mountains of Maine offering the best skiing, snowboarding, and golf in New England.”
The Department of Motor Vehicles also spent $16,000 on a stay at the same resort.
We reached out to ask why a resort stay was necessary for state business. The Judicial Department told us…
Question 3: But the largest expense is gas for state vehicles. How does the state fuel up its cars?
The state spent $5.5 million on regular gasoline last year.
WEX Bank signed a contract with the State of Washington that Maine and several other states have added themselves onto. Everyone driving a state vehicle uses WEX Bank fuel cards to buy gas, and the state can set limits on how much each person can spend and track how much each person is spending.
The state gets a 1.7% rebate that can increase if the state pays WEX quickly. And WEX makes most of its profit by charging gas stations a fee to accept the cards.
The state also buys diesel for its trucks from Dead River Company, based in South Portland. Last year it cost $2.5 million.
Their current
one-year contract is for 726,000 gallons at $2.80 per gallon. That’s a better rate than their
last deal (slightly less than two years) when they bought 900,000 gallons for over $4 per gallon.
Question 4: Which employees are using all that gasoline?
There were 22 workers that got reimbursed $10,000 or more for gas mileage, all the way up to $18,000.
Most of those expensive individual workers were from the Department of Transportation.
That’s all car mileage that was reimbursed at 50 cents per mile. But last month, the state raised it slightly to
54 cents per mile, so it’s possible we’ll see the cost increase.
And there were 21 people that racked up out of state flight bills of $1,000 or more.