Town Manager Law
This document is reprinted with permission from "The Manager Plan in Maine" published by the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy. Copies of the complete book may be obtained by calling the Center at (207) 581-1646.
As previously discussed, the legislature repealed in 1969 the 30-year-old town manager enabling act and enacted in its place a more extensive town manager enabling law. The revised enabling act contains provisions which:
1) specifically relate to managerial qualifications, tenure, absence and disability,
2) expand and define managerial duties,
3) clarify the role of the selectmen as it relates to administration,
4) permit at the discretion of the town customarily elective town offices to be filled by managerial appointment, and
5) grant the town meeting broad power to enact ordinances governing administration.
This law eliminates some of the structural deficiencies of the earlier act and permits the town at the discretion of the town meeting to revise and integrate administration under the authority of the manager. Thus, this act permits towns to vest stronger appointing authority in the manager, which corresponds to the intent of the national movement for a strong appointed chief executive. However, the appointing authority continues to be rather dispersed between the town manager and the board of selectmen. There may be little acceptance of administrative integration under the authority of the manager until the need for such an alteration of tradition is amply demonstrated to town residents.
The current town manager law, however, continues to provide an appropriate mechanism for adopting the manager plan in the state. Of the thirty Maine municipalities adopting the town meeting-selectmen-manager form of government since 1970, a majority have done so by adopting the town manager enabling law.