It is a recurring operating condition. The nonprofits and small providers carrying those outstanding balances told the committee what they do while they wait: they put it on a credit card. They draw on a line of credit. They decide which bills to pay this month.
DHHS offered honest context. When eligibility expanded in 2024, applications jumped from about 150 per month to more than 1,000 in a single summer. Systems built for one volume buckled at another. The office made genuine improvements — shared work queues, standardized procedures, a temporary dedicated invoice position.
That position has since expired. The permanent fix requires two additional full-time employees. Standardized training is targeted for fall 2026.
Fall 2026. For children already in custody now.
These are administrative facts. They describe how the problem was created. They say nothing about who pays while it's being fixed. A vendor setup delay in Augusta costs Augusta nothing. It costs a provider in Lewiston her operating margin. The state faces no penalty for a late invoice. The provider cannot charge interest. She cannot refuse service to children already in her care — not without harm to the children, which means not really. Every structural incentive tolerates delay. Every cost lands on the party with the least leverage.
The state already solved this problem once.
Maine's prompt payment law requires that contractors on state construction projects receive interest — 1 percent per month — on payments that come late.³ Concrete pourers. Steel suppliers. Subcontractors on public buildings. The principle is simple: miss the deadline, bear the cost.
Maine has not applied that principle to child care providers. The legislature wrote that gap. The legislature can close it.
Maine is not a startup with cash flow problems. Maine has the power to tax, the authority to borrow, and a constitutional obligation to children in its custody. When the state pays late, it transfers its financial risk to the person least able to absorb it — the small-business operator running on a margin of a few dollars a day per child, who cannot call a bond market when the check doesn't come.
The state becomes, in effect, an involuntary borrower. The provider becomes its involuntary lender. Nobody agreed to those terms.
When a child ages out of the system, the state closes a file. When a provider closes her doors because the state's accounts payable ran her out of business, there is one fewer place willing to take the next child who needs care.
The state can borrow from investors who agreed to lend it money. It should not be borrowing from child-care providers who never did.
Bibliography
1. AnnMarie Hilton, "Maine Struggles to Pay Child Care Providers Serving Foster Children on Time," Maine Morning Star, March 19, 2025.
2. Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability (OPEGA), child care payment timeliness report, reviewed at Maine Joint Legislative Committee on Government Oversight, May 20, 2026.
3. Maine Prompt Payment Act, 10 M.R.S.A. §§ 1111–1120.
4. Mal Meyer, "'They're Family:' Child Care Subsidy Processing Delays Put Providers in a Pinch," WGME, October 2, 2024.