Dirigo No More

A school consolidation plan in Maine:

The plan itself is familiar: the pursuit of the false god of educational efficiency through the concentration of school districts as ordered by the governor. 290 school districts would be merged into 26 regional administrative units.

What makes it stranger is that Maine is one of a handful of New England states where one can still find the remnants of American democracy functioning at human scale thanks to such institutions as town meetings and lots of small villages that do what they want without excessive interference from above. This tradition has produced in recent years more independent governors (although not the present one) than just about any state and a culture of honest independence in politics and governance that would best be emulated rather than reorganized….

To add to the oddity, it is all being done in the name of "smart growth."

That's Sam Smith, the localist tribune behind Undernews, in an angry essay decrying the ongoing effort "to replace the decentralization of decision-making with centralized, bureaucratic choices."