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Maine

Overview

The Maine Public Employees Retirement System (MainePERS) administers pension and other benefits for most public employees in the state, including state employees, public school teachers and other school district employees, and employees of political subdivisions that have elected to participate. The system administers the State and Teacher Plan, the Consolidated Plan (for employees of state and local public entities including school districts), and plans for legislators and judges. Maine PERS also administers a 401(a), 403(b), and 457 plan.

Plan Design

Defined benefit plans serve as the primary retirement benefit for substantially all public employees in Maine.

According to the US Government Accountability Office, 36 percent of employees of state and local government in Maine participate in Social Security.

Access plan design detail

Authorizing Statutes and Board Structure

Maine Revised Statutes Title 5, Part 20 establishes the Maine Public Employees’ Retirement System and the 8-member Board of Trustees. 

Details regarding the composition of these and other retirement boards is accessible via the Retirement and Investment Board Characteristics search tool located at the bottom of this page.

Fiduciary Duty/Prudence Standard

MainePERS trustees are required by statute to adhere to the requirements of the Maine Uniform Trust Code in discharging their investment responsibilities. 

These requirements are outlined in Title 18-B, Part 1, Chapter 8 of the Maine Revised Statutes. According to 18-B ME Rev Stat § 804:

A trustee shall administer the trust as a prudent person would, by considering the purposes, terms, distributional requirements and other circumstances of the trust. In satisfying this standard, the trustee shall exercise reasonable care, skill and caution.

Legal Protections of Retirement Benefits

It appears that the Maine courts have yet to address the exact protections for public pension benefits. Nevertheless, the courts recognize an employee's legitimate retirement expectations and will likely weigh those expectations against the government's justifications for an amendment. Spiller v. State, 627 A.2d 513 (Me. 1993) (declining to imply contractual rights where no intent expressed in statutory language but recognizing that state employees have "legitimate retirement expectations, entitling them to due process); Huard v. Maine State Retirement Sys., 562 A.2d 694 (Me. 1989)(state employees have legitimate retirement expectations); Soucy v. Board of Trustees of Maine State Retirement System, 456 A.2d 1279 (Me. 1983)(declining to address constitutional issues and holding that insubstantial changes in amount of retirement benefits did not impair retired police officers' state or federal constitutional rights); Me. Op. Atty. Gen. No. 91-6 (reasoning that Maine courts are likely to use a case-by-case approach weighing the particular alteration of the state employee's pension rights against the asserted governmental objective).(ME CONST., Article 1, §11) Source: Robert Klausner, Esq., State Constitutional Protections for Public Sector Retirement Benefits

See also the following search tools:

Retirement System Account Interest Policies Economic Actuarial Assumptions Retirement and Investment Board Characteristics
Information about interest rates applied to account balances of inactive plan participants Assumed rates of investment return and inflation Composition and characteristics of public retirement and investment oversight boards
Mortality Assumptions Plan Design Features Post-retirement Employment Policies
Public retirement system actuarial assumptions for mortality Numerous elements of retirement plan design Policies governing return-to-work for retirement system annuitants

More Data

Flag of Maine (June 16, 1909)

Population (2025) 1,414,874

Maine public pension statistics,
per U.S. Census Bureau as of FY 2025

Assets

$21.4 billion

Active Members

55,890

Annuitants

50,575

Benefits Paid

$1.3 billion

Employee Contributions

$271.6 million

Employer Contributions

$623.6 million

Systems

One state system that accounts for 100 percent of assets and public pension plan participants in the state.

More Data


Become A Member

Becoming a member of NASRA offers a unique opportunity to join a community committed to the sound, efficient, and innovative stewardship of public retirement systems. Membership connects you with a network of professionals and experts, providing valuable insights into managing public retirement systems with a focus on sustainability and risk-averse strategies.

By joining NASRA, you gain the tools and resources to enhance the management of public retirement systems, ensuring their long-term success and reliability for generations to come.

What's New at NASRA: Government Spending Issue Brief

NASRA’s March 2026 update on government spending makes a basic but important point: public pension benefits are not paid out of a government’s day-to-day operating budget. They are paid from trust funds that employees and employers contribute to during an employee’s working years. Those trusts distribute more than $400 billion each year to retirees and beneficiaries in communities across the country. On a national basis, employer contributions to pension trusts in FY 2023 equaled 5.16 percent of direct general spending by state and local governments, which shows that pension contributions remain a limited share of overall public spending even though the level varies from one state to another. 
The brief also shows that pension costs should be viewed in the context of the changes governments have made over the past 15 years to strengthen plan funding. Following the 2008–09 market decline, nearly every state and many local governments adjusted contributions, benefits, or both to improve pension sustainability. More recent data show that employer contributions increased from FY 2022 to FY 2023, but pension spending as a share of total government spending remained broadly stable. The updated brief provides FY 2023 figures and also projects the aggregate pension spending rate for FY 2024, offering a useful snapshot of both current costs and the longer funding trend.