In the early 1990s, secession was a hot topic.
Secession bills were submitted to the Maine Legislature from Cushing, Great Diamond, Long and Peaks islands to leave the City of Portland. Two coastal neighborhoods of Biddeford also filed bills.
Only Long Island succeeded, becoming its own town on July 1, 1993. The flurry of bills led the Legislature in 1995 to adopt secession guidelines. The process became even more specific with a 1999 change in the 1995 law requiring, among other things, that at least 50 percent of a territory’s registered voters sign a petition before secession proceedings begin.
Legislators involved with both bills said the goal was to create a predictable process that all sides understood and that would require more work at the local level before parties came to Augusta.
“The message is sent with these guidelines, that we expect you to work on your issues locally first,” said a legislator at the time, Rep. Beverly C. Dagget (D-Augusta), during a July 20, 1995, debate on secession guidelines, according to the legislative record. “We want to see the work that has been done to identify the problems that you have and make an attempt to work on those where you are.”
Rep. Herb Adams (D-Portland), who filed a Peaks secession bill in 1995, also sponsored a general secession bill. Rep. Steven G. Rowe (also a Portland Democrat at the time) submitted his own secession bill. After hearings that spring, a secession law was enacted in the summer of 1995.
“My intention was to make a discussion-heavy and predictable process with plenty of time for reflection on both sides,” said Adams. “It came out a little more strict on process and shy on discussion,” he said, of the final 1995 law.
Rowe, now the state’s attorney general, chose to respond to secession questions through Charles Dow, his spokesman. Dow said Rowe’s goal was to create a process so that the Legislature would have the relevant information necessary to evaluate secession proposals. “He’s a process-oriented person,” Dow said.
The 1995 law required a great deal of information about the municipality a territory was proposing to secede from, including: population changes, patterns of residential and industrial development, land use controls, current government services, local taxes and the impact secession would have on surrounding school districts. The law also asked if a neutral third party was used to help resolve the dispute. There were no requirements to specifically measure community support.
In 1997 the Sebago Lake territory of Frye Island received legislative approval to secede from Standish. Residents of the summer-only island said they received almost no town services for the $600,000 in taxes they paid. The town approved the secession request.
After Frye Island’s success, the Legislature went back and refined the 1995 law. The 1999 bill changed the law to require a petition signed by 50 percent of voters to start the process, calls for a public hearing, mandates an advisory vote and outlines mediation if the two parties cannot agree.
Former Senator Jill M. Goldthwait, an independent who represented most of Hancock County including several island communities, was a co-sponsor of the 1999 bill. “The intent was more that the community was going to undergo a fairly exhaustive process before it came to the Legislature,” she said. There would be “lots of opportunity for a broad cross-section of the community to weigh in.”
Since 1999, the law has not been used that often and there are some who feel it needs changes. When asked about modifying the secession law, Adams said, “The law can be sharpened and made better in light of practical experience. But it is impossible to do in the middle of a hot experience,” he said, referring to the Peaks situation. “You can’t legislate human nature. And people feel passionately about both sides of the issue.”
For her part, Goldthwait said the Legislature made a mistake in allowing a secession territory to still submit a bill if a local agreement has not been reached at the end of the process. “If you can’t resolve it at the local level, why would the Legislature be in a better position to resolve it?” she said.