For some, Maine’s dedication to home rule may defy logic, especially for those who have moved to the state. It may seem like a foreign concept that each organized municipality in the state, all 482 of them, has its own government, ordinances, procedures, and schedules, but we think it’s makes perfect sense.
Here individual voters form the legislative body and annually approve what the elected and appointed officials can spend money on and what level of decision making they can do without a further vote. Some native New Englanders might not know it, but in much of the rest of the country, municipal decisions are made at different levels of government and not directly by the people.
Most other states don’t have what is known as an open town meeting at which any resident can participate. Instead, you have a representative form of government where voters elect somebody to a larger body – a board of commissioners or city council, for example – and hope those in power represent your interests as well as you would like.
In New England states, the annual town meeting is a tradition that predates the founding of the country. It is the purest form of democracy. We think it is tradition that should be cherished and protected.
At every annual open town meeting, the resident taxpayers get to decide their own affairs. If you want a tax cut or to see more spent on a service, you can go to town meeting yourself, make your case in public, and, if you can convince enough of your neighbors to vote your way, you can affect the outcome of the budget, and therefore the rate paid.
That is simply not possible in too many other places in the world. We believe people should be able to freely make the case for what they want or don’t want, and to make those decisions as locally as possible.
Town meetings traditionally were held the old-fashioned way: in person, face to face. Today, a good many towns have adopted some level of referendum-style meeting, where they decide at least part of the warrant by secret ballot.
We understand why. It is meant to increase participation when residents can vote in minutes by coloring in a circle as opposed to sitting through a multi-hour business meeting. In those towns you have to make the public hearing before the town meeting to make your case to your neighbors. However, it removes some level of ability to debate items in public and to affect the power of having these discussions.
In whatever form your town uses, it is important that you participate. The right to vote is precious. The right to argue in public, to make the case for what you want, freely, is important. Fellow Americans have bought and paid for this right in blood.
Around the world, too many people have lived and died without having any say at all in their own affairs. To have the right to be your own government and not take part, we think, defies logic.
