The Manager Plan in Maine
THE
DEVELOPMENT OF THE MANAGER PLAN
Chapter
I
Since 1917, when the City of Auburn
adopted the manager plan of government, Maine has been in the forefront of the manager
plan movement. After a modest beginning over 70 years ago, the Maine manager movement
expanded to a peak in 1949 when Maine had over 21 percent of all manager plan
municipalities in the United States and led all other states in total manager plan
adoptions. By 1989, Maine had 187 manager plan municipalities -- 7.2 percent of the total
number in the U.S. Table 1 compares Maine manager plan adoptions to manager plan adoptions
in the U.S. by decade from 1900 to 1989.
The growth of the manager plan in Maine
roughly parallels the nationwide movement. In the 1940s, manager plan adoptions grew at a
faster rate in Maine than in the U.S. Since 1950, Maine adoptions have slowed somewhat
while nationwide the number of adoptions has continued to rise, especially in the sunbelt
states of Florida, Texas and Louisiana.
Why did the manager plan so develop in
Maine? To what extent were the factors contributing to its development similar to those
factors which encouraged widespread adoption of the manager plan nationwide (e.g., citizen
dissatisfaction with partisanship and lack of representation in municipal government, the
spoils system, waste, inefficiency, and lack of management typical of the 19th century
weak mayor-council form of government) (Willoughby, 1969, & Nolting, 1969, pp. 1 -
11)?
The first part of this chapter discusses
early manager plan adoptions in Maine. It focuses upon the early manager charters, why
they were adopted and how they operated. In many instances the early manager charters were
the prototype or "model" for charters subsequently adopted in Maine. The second
section presents the findings of a 1968 study which defined factors in the growth of the
manager plan in Maine (Forster & Dunham, 1968).
Table 1, Maine Manager Plan and U.S. Manager
Plan Adoptions by Decade
Return to Manager Plan Table of Contents
