A recent Associated Press story suggested that Maine dined exceptionally well at the federal trough, consuming $1.41 in funds from Washington for every $1 it sent. But while Maine receives more federal dollars per person than its neighbors, its serving of pork looks more than a little lean.

The federal government sent Maine $7.5 billion in fiscal year 1998. For a state of 1.2 million people, that sounds like a lot of money, but consider where it went. Nearly $2 billion was sent to seniors as Social Security payments; another $1.9 billion to Health and Human Services payments; veterans received $218 million in retirement and disability payments or services; subsidized housing got $213 million. That’s not pork, that’s bare bones. And the one area where a little pork was possible — the Navy in ’98 spent $1.6 billion here in procurements and wages — has had its numbers reviewed so often by Pentagon budget cutters that there’s not enough fat left to make a decent pot of beans.

The Northeast-Midwest Institute annually reviews the federal figures for these regions, and its narrative for Maine was disturbing. The state did well with Agriculture and Health and Human Services, but lost funds from Commerce, Transportation and HUD. Its drop reflected the rest of New England’s relatively meager showing for attracting federal money. Worse, the institute doesn’t distinguish between money from entitlement programs — often called pass-through funds — and goodies members of Congress have gotten for being in the right place at the right time.

For that, the authority is the group called Citizens Against Government Waste, a spin-off of the 1980s Grace Commission dedicated to calling a pig a pig. Its latest Pork Alert contains items such as the $375 million to build a helicopter carrier the Pentagon says it doesn’t want, but that Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, in whose district the carrier will be built, does. Not to be outdone militarily, House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt will have five F-15 fighters, worth $275 million and which the Pentagon also doesn’t want, built in his district.

There’s lots more, from $3.4 million for a recreation area on the New Jersey side of the Delaware Water Gap to a $1 million grant for Texas to study growing plants in a vacuum to $10 million for New York to build a VA-HUD regional application center and a dozen others. Three points to consider: Maine is not mentioned anywhere in the Pork Alert (it was ranked the second-lowest pork state for 1998); the folks receiving what others call pork don’t view it that way at all, seeing it instead as necessary investments in the local infrastructure; and the members of Congress who brought home the bacon almost always had seats on the House or Senate Appropriations Committees.

Maine has no member on these powerful committees and, unlike about half the states, its governor has no office in Washington. At least as important, however, is that while regions such as the South traditionally have pulled together to direct federal dollars, New England’s delegations have remained more independent. The result is that nonetitlement money has a longstanding habit of going anyplace but here.