Maine Flags the Same Contract Failure Two Audits Running
Summary
Maine's state auditor tested 57 contracts against the $1.6 billion the state paid contractors in fiscal 2025 and found 41 with no documented proof that anyone checked the price was fair. It is the same test that failed all 45 contracts the auditor touched a year earlier, when contract-related payments totaled $2.1 billion and the finding was rated a material weakness -- one of only two that severe anywhere in the state's books. This year the finding was downgraded to a lesser category, but the agency responsible, the Department of Administrative and Financial Services, went further than before: it disagrees with the finding outright, and its own corrective action plan says a fix is not required.
What the test actually checks
The requirement comes from the Office of State Procurement Services' own policy manual: before the state signs off on a contract, a cost or price analysis is supposed to happen, connected to every procurement action including modifications. It is the paperwork that is meant to show Maine got the best value it could, not just a signature. In the FY2025 audit, the auditor also found that of the 57 contracts and related Procurement Justification Forms tested, 36 were not signed at least 14 days ahead of the contract's start date as OSPS policy requires, and 24 of those were signed only after the vendor had already begun the work -- as late as 220 days after the contract had started.
The finding isn't new
The FY2024 audit found the identical problem first. That year the auditor tested 45 contracts against $2.1 billion in contract-related payments and could not find cost-analysis documentation for any of them -- a 100% failure rate. Regulators classified it a material weakness, the most severe category in the audit's vocabulary, and it was one of only two findings anywhere in that year's entire Single Audit rated that severely. It also carried no prior-year history: FY2024 was the first time OSA had tested this population of contracts this way.
View data as table
| FY2024 | 100% (45 of 45) | material weakness; DAFS/OSPS partially agreed |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | 72% (41 of 57) | significant deficiency; DAFS disagrees, says no fix required |
This year, the agency says no fix is needed
The two years produced two different responses from the Department of Administrative and Financial Services, which houses the Office of State Procurement Services. After the FY2024 finding, DAFS "partially agreed," disputing five of the finding's eight component parts but accepting the rest. After the FY2025 finding -- rated a step down, a significant deficiency rather than a material weakness -- DAFS disagreed with it outright, and its corrective action plan states plainly that management's opinion is corrective action is not required. On the signature-timing piece specifically, OSPS argued the auditor's own 14-day standard isn't really a rule: "the 14 days is a recommendation to allow for OSPS review and processing time," the agency wrote, adding that Maine's hybrid procurement system -- where individual agencies negotiate and execute their own contracts before OSPS ever reviews them -- means OSPS has "little insight into agency activities prior to submission."
DAFS also disputed how the dollar figure itself should be read. Where OSA's finding frames the $1.6 billion in FY2025 contract-related payments as one population, DAFS supplied its own breakdown by category -- services, commodities, highway materials, equipment, and grants -- adding to $1,534,477 in the figures the department printed, and argued that a payment governed by a statutory formula grant and one governed by competitive bidding shouldn't be judged by the same yardstick. The auditor's finding stands regardless: whatever the right way to slice the $1.6 billion, 41 of the 57 contracts actually sampled from it came back with no proof a price check happened.
The takeaway
- The same procurement failure has now survived two consecutive Single Audits. FY2024 found no cost-analysis documentation for any of 45 contracts tested (100%); FY2025 found none for 41 of 57 (72%) -- a lower rate, but still a majority, against $2.1 billion and $1.6 billion in contract-related payments respectively.
- Contracts keep getting signed after the work already started. 24 of 45 tested contracts in FY2024 and 24 of 57 in FY2025 were signed only after the vendor had begun -- up to 187 days late the first year, 220 days late the second.
- The state's own response to its own auditor hardened, not softened. DAFS partially agreed with the FY2024 finding; it disagrees outright with the FY2025 repeat, and its corrective action plan states no fix is required -- even as the underlying failure rate stayed above 70%.
The $1.6 billion (FY2025) and $2.1 billion (FY2024) figures are OSA's own stated context numbers for total contract-related payments, not the dollar value of the noncompliant contracts specifically -- OSA's testing is a compliance sample, not a full-population dollar accounting of which contracts failed. DAFS disputes OSA's $1.6 billion framing and supplies its own category breakdown totaling $1,534,477 in the units printed in its response; this piece reports both figures as each party stated them rather than resolving the discrepancy. No FY2026 Single Audit exists yet, so whether this finding repeats a third time is unknown.
The failure-rate percentages, the year-over-year dollar decline, and the signed-late rates are this outlet's own arithmetic on the audits' own figures (methods and caveats in analysis.json); the reports state the underlying counts individually but do not themselves state these derived comparisons. A blind adversarial verifier, working from the primary documents alone with no access to this draft, independently checked every itemized fact; see verification.json.
Sources(3) ▾
- Maine Office of the State Auditor, State of Maine Single Audit Report, Uniform Guidance -- Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2025 (2026-03-26) — The primary FY2025 document. Finding 2025-009 (Schedule of Findings and Questioned Costs, pp. E-33-E-41): OSA tested 57 active contracts, master agreements, and purchase orders and found 36 contracts/PJFs not signed at least 14 days before the contract start date, 24 signed after work had already begun (up to 220 days late), and cost-analysis documentation missing for 41 of 57; context states FY2025 contract-related payments of approximately $1.6 billion. Classified a significant deficiency, a repeat of FY2024 Finding 2024-015. DAFS's written response disagrees with the finding, and the Corrective Action Plan (F-9) records management's opinion that corrective action is not required. maine.gov · original document
- Maine Office of the State Auditor, State of Maine Single Audit Report, Uniform Guidance -- Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2024 (2025-03-27) — The prior-year document establishing the finding this piece tracks. Finding 2024-015 (pp. E-49-E-52): OSA tested 45 active contracts, master agreements, and purchase orders and found 24 of 45 signed after the contract start date (3-187 days late), and cost-analysis documentation missing for all 45 procurement actions tested (100%); context states FY2024 contract-related payments of approximately $2.1 billion. Classified a material weakness -- one of only two (2024-001 and 2024-015) anywhere in that year's Single Audit -- with no prior-year history. DAFS/OSPS's written response 'partially agrees,' disagreeing with 5 of the finding's 8 component sub-findings. maine.gov · original document
- Maine Office of the State Auditor, Report Fraud, Waste and Abuse -- Office of the State Auditor (2026-07-19) — OSA's own public reporting channel -- source for cta.json's phone, mailing address, and online-form contact details. maine.gov · original document
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Every year, Maine's independent state auditor samples a batch of the contracts the state signs with outside vendors and checks whether anyone documented that the price was fair before the state agreed to pay it. In the FY2025 Single Audit Report⧉, released March 26, 2026, the auditor tested 57 contracts against the $1.6 billion Maine paid contractors that year and found 41 with no such documentation on file. A year earlier, in the FY2024 audit⧉, the same test failed all 45 contracts it touched.