Earth            Maine Municipal Association
                         & the Maine Council for the Social Studies
MCSS

Local Government
in Maine

Providing for Order
& Security

Providing for the
Common Good

Setting Priorities

 MMA

Maine Learning Results

Resources

Home Rule . . .

spacer.gif (49 bytes) It's the right of a town or city to enact laws that are municipal in nature and that do not frustrate or run counter to a state law and/or that the state has not prohibited the town or city from passing. The concept of home rule is very important to local government because without home rule authority, cities and towns would depend on specific acts of the State Legislature for their governing authority.

Maine has been considered a strong "home rule" state since November 1969, when an amendment to the state constitution delegated broad "home rule" ordinance powers to cities and towns. Such ordinances range from ones controlling the barking of dogs, to the regulation of adult businesses, to the regulation of signs, to the control of a town's growth, to the review of real estate development projects, to the banning of herbicide spraying, to the regulation of local timber harvesting.