Enter the Hegemony

The State steps up its plan to implement its new municipal ordinances.

What is left of nature for the local residents of an Airbnb State? The sky? in a Home Rule State? Simon Lee Unsplash

Business as usual

Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission will likely receive a completed county-wide housing study by early 2023. On Aug. 16, commissioners authorized LCRPC to negotiate with Camion Associates of Saratoga Springs, New York for a study. Camion is an economic research organization with offices in Portland. In 2017, Camion produced a housing study for the Boothbay-Boothbay Harbor Joint Economic Development Committee. The Boothbay Register August 18

Why is a remote consulting firm doing a study of our local community?

Because LD 2003 provides for a grant for Municipal Planning Assistance Grant and Incentive Program Fund to hire consultants and staff for the purpose of administering the new State municipal ordinances.

Since 1968 when Maine constitutionally became a Home Rule state, the Maine Legislature has been fudging the language and overriding the intention of the Constitution in favor of an all-controlling corporate state. Such language includes the declaration that any corporation the Legislature charters by special acts of legislation prohibited by Article IV Part Third Section 14 of the Maine Constitution, serves an “essential government function” or chartering “municipal corporations serving as instruments of the state” as Section 14 makes an exception for municipal purposes. Now the State is trying to take overreaching control of municipal ordinances.

So far it looks like the State is granting that power to itself but although the State has claimed a significant amount of control over municipal ordinances we are still a Home Rule State operating as a public-private for-profit non-profit wealth concentration and redistribution system. The State has expanded to include all but as it morphs into new forms, other systems evolve as well. Through the non-profit circuit, other entities can play a significant not-to-be-denied role.

The intention of Home Rule is to provide for local control but the constitutional language uses the phrase “not prohibited by the State or general law” and so the new State law prohibits municipalities from writing ordinances prohibiting overcrowding or establishing…