Question 1: How much are taxpayers spending on pensions paid to local employees?

 

Our auditors captured pensions from the cities of Portland, Lewiston and Auburn. 

 

In total, that cost taxpayers over $55 million for 1,952 employees last year. We’ll be counting school employees separately, but we’ve included employees from police, fire, housing authority, Auburn-Lewiston airport, more

 

The cities are paying out a similar number of pensions as five years ago, but there’s more people earning pensions above or near $100,000 than there were five years ago.

 

Local Pensions

 

Question 2: Who are the top pension earners in each city?

 

For each of the three cities, the highest pension earner was the former Executive Director of the local Housing Authority, which builds and maintains affordable housing. 

 

Housing Authority former directors:

Jim Dowling made $98,500 pension in Lewiston.

Richard Whiting made $80,670 in Auburn.

Peter Howe made $134,506 in Portland.

 

Howe broke his own record for Portland’s highest ever pension. Only two active employees at the Housing Authority made that much.

 

That’s nothing new for Howe. Since 2017, Howe has made a total of $754,000 in pension money, with a slight increase each year.

 

 

Question 3: How does all this affect the state’s finances?

 

Portland’s average pension is also a bit higher than Auburn or Lewiston. 

 

Auburn average: $26,221

Lewiston average: $26,902

Portland average: $29,000

Portland pensions  $35.1 million

Lewiston: $13.2 million

Auburn: $6.9 million

 

Once you factor in state employees and other cities, it’s more money than the state can afford right now. 

 

As of last year the state still needed to save up an additional $2.3 billion to have enough funding to pay the eventual pensions of public employees working right now, according to the think tank Truth in Accounting. Plus another $2.2 billion for those employees’ healthcare benefits. Those are all costs the state is pushing onto future taxpayers.

 

 

Question 4: How are these pensions calculated? What decides the annual value?

 

First, the state takes the average of the three highest yearly salaries an employee has ever earned at their city job. 

 

That gets multiplied by the number of years you worked for. And then multiplied by the "accrual rate”: 2% for everyone, with just a few exceptions. The result is your annual pension. 

 

 

	2024	2019
$100k	4	3
$80k-$99,999	17	5
$60k-$79,999	107	40
$30k-$59,999	719	532
$0-$29,999	1,103	1,270

(Portland, Lewiston, Auburn. Excludes school employees.)