Penobscot County leaders spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on credit cards that were paid by taxpayers in 2025, the same year a multimillion-dollar financial crisis caused by years of mismanagement emerged.
That spending by county officials included more than $42,000 in travel expenses for flights and hotels up and down the East Coast, and $18,000 on food and drinks, ranging from meals at Mason’s and Geaghan’s to takeout at Chick-fil-A and Dunkin’. County leaders also spent more than $53,000 on Amazon purchases, as well as charges for dry cleaning and car washes.
In total, department heads, county commissioners and the county administrator spent more than $350,000 on Penobscot County-issued credit cards last year, according to records obtained by the Bangor Daily News through a Freedom of Access Act request. The majority of those purchases were paid for through property tax revenue, though some were reimbursed through Department of Homeland Security grants or other outside funding.
The receipts provide a snapshot of how Penobscot County leaders allowed a permissive spending culture even as some knew it was facing a multimillion-dollar budget deficit. While the amount spent on credit cards is a small portion of the county’s $35 million budget, it highlights a lack of spending policies and inability to reel in unnecessary costs at the time.
The BDN requested the financial records from Penobscot County through a FOAA in December 2025 after details of the county’s financial crisis emerged. Over the next seven months, county officials admitted to forgetting to fulfill the request, violated state law by failing to provide a good faith cost estimate for the materials, and then abruptly demanded a $612.50 payment for the materials after previously stating all fees would be waived.
The BDN ultimately obtained the materials for no cost in mid July.
Penobscot County’s finances came under scrutiny after former County Administrator Scott Adkins revealed the county was experiencing a multimillion-dollar shortfall in November 2025. County officials were underbudgeting costs for the Penobscot County Jail for years while they unsuccessfully lobbied state legislators to provide more funds to operate the aging and overcrowded facility. This led to millions of dollars being drained from the county’s reserve funds.
To account for the years of underfunding, Penobscot County increased its budget for 2026. That led to an average 20% spike in county taxes for communities, with some seeing their taxes jump by nearly 40%.
After the BDN requested the records, Penobscot County froze all spending on county-issued credit cards and enacted a new spending policy. That policy took effect on July 1 and has reduced the amount of money spent on county credit cards, according to Administrator Blair Tinkham, who was hired in January and implemented the changes.
It’s common for municipalities to issue credit cards to staff, but Penobscot County previously had lenient policies for what its money could be spent on, Tinkham and Finance Director Brenda Palmer said.
Credit card purchases didn’t previously need formal approval if there were funds in the department’s budget to cover them, Palmer said.
Adkins, now the Kennebec County finance director, added that if spending was paid off, on budget and for legitimate reasons, then there was no issue with it at the time.
While “there was some excessive spending on meals and treats,” the county commissioners got the final say on expenses, said Adkins, who was paid more than $121,000 in 2025.
The spending, which was paid with taxpayer money and grants, varied wildly across county departments.
The Sheriff’s Office spent nearly $100,000 on credit card purchases in 2025, more than any other department, according to the records obtained by the BDN. All of the costs were within the department’s budget that year, Sheriff Troy Morton said. Items bought on the office’s Sam’s Club Mastercard range from trash bags to policing equipment.
Some of the most outstanding purchases included regular purchases of raisins, instant mashed potatoes and over the counter medicine at Sam’s Club. The purchases happened in six separate months and were part of receipts totalling roughly $500.
Such purchases were for the operation of the jail and not for county employees, Morton said.
“While bulk purchases are made through several vendors, there are times when the facility requires additional items and daily supplies. These needs can be affected by fluctuations in the inmate population, available storage space, and the availability of items that our bulk vendors do not regularly supply,” Morton said.
Grants and an officer fund paid for some items, in which cases the card was used and reimbursed afterward, said Morton, who was paid $119,000 in 2025.
Roughly $1,300 in interest and late fees were also charged to the sheriff’s office’s account due to late payments in seven months. The late payments were caused by a delay in the mail, Morton said. The interest was also paid for by Penobscot County.
The county’s other elected officials, commissioners Dan Tremble, David Marshall and Andre Cushing, spent a combined $8,320.95. Tremble did not use his card, making his only charge a $25 annual fee. During budget meetings in December 2025, Tremble said the cards should not be used and spending policies should be implemented.
Marshall and Cushing spent more than $8,000 on plane tickets, hotels, event registration and food. In March 2025, the pair spent more than $1,200 to register for a National Association of Counties conference in Washington, D.C., as well as $600 in meals and other charges during the three-day event.
Marshall and Cushing each made purchases of more than $100 at restaurants or shops five times throughout the year. Twice the pair paid checks at the same restaurant on the same day, including a combined $294 spent at Water’s Edge Restaurant and Bar in Edgecomb on Dec. 9.
With Penobscot County having three county commissioners, it would be a quorum if Marshall and Cushing discussed any county business while together.
Cushing, who was paid $18,000 in 2025, did not answer any questions about his spending when contacted by the BDN.
“The obsession your paper has with digging up issues rather than reporting on matters of significance to our county residents is wearing thin on many of us,” Cushing said in an email to the BDN.
Marshall did not respond to a request for comment. Marshall and Tremble were each paid $17,400 in 2025. Commissioners cut their pay for 2026.
The county’s other top spenders in 2025 were the heads of three departments: information technologies, emergency management and the Penobscot Regional Communications Center.
Christopher Fox, director of the Penobscot County Emergency Management Agency, said his department, which spent roughly $48,000 on its credit card, came in under budget in 2025 and purchases were approved under county and grant rules.
Fox’s purchases included food for meetings and training, car washes and supplies from Amazon. Many of the purchases were reimbursed as part of a $270,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security awarded to the county in 2024, Fox said.
Fox, who was paid $82,000 in 2025, did not know about the county’s financial crisis when making the purchases, he said.
“Once the county’s financial situation became clear, the Emergency Management Agency slowed discretionary purchasing using county budgeted funds in order to support the county’s overall budgetary needs,” Fox said, adding that he does not know when he first learned about the county’s financial crisis.
Most department heads weren’t aware of the county overspending until the end of 2025, Tinkham said. Many couldn’t have known the scale of the budget deficit because an audit hadn’t been completed since 2021. Penobscot County’s 2024 audit revealed it overspent by more than $5 million that year.
Even Palmer, the county’s finance director, was not aware of the multimillion-dollar shortfall until it was announced publicly last November, she said.
“Somebody buying pizzas for the team, it looks bad. But [department heads] didn’t know,” Tinkham said.
The county’s 2025 audit is projected to be finished in November, Tinkham said.
In the time Tinkham has worked for the county, he has implemented a purchasing policy and created an expense prioritization framework. The policies have limited the use of credit cards to roughly $10,000 a month, according to this year’s credit card purchases provided by Tinkham.
That’s a stark drop from the roughly $24,000 that was previously being spent each month on the cards, said Palmer, who was paid roughly $96,000 in 2024.
That drop in spending has been one of the reasons, along with a hiring freeze, why Penobscot County is on budget this year, Tinkham and Palmer said. Cost savings has led to more than $1 million in projected surplus funds for the end of 2026.
Food and eating budgets, which accounted for more than $20,000 in charges in 2025, have been slashed this year.
Tinkham said those expenses could come back in smaller quantities in the future.