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Palmer is a city in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 12,448 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. Palmer adopted a home rule charter in 2004 with a council-manager form of government.
- 330 ft (101 m)
- Hampden
The first wave of home rule reform in the United States started in 1875 and lasted through the 1930s. Massachusetts missed this first wave, but it joined other states in passing a constitutional guarantee of home rule in a second wave of adoptions that began in the post-World War II era.
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Author: Alvin D. Sokolow. Also referred to as local control, community autonomy, and self-governance, home rule is the principle that local governments in the American federal system should possess a high degree of discretionary authority in serving their communities. The contrast is with strong state government control over community public ...
Section 2 of the Home Rule Amendment, provides: "[a]nycity or town . . . [has] the power to adopt or revise a charter or to amend its existing charter . . . [the provisions of which] shall not be inconsistent with the constitution or any laws enacted by the general court in conformity with the powers reserved to the general court by section eight."
Education was considered a private matter and a responsibility of individual parents, not the government. Schooling was seen as a service that should be paid by the users of that service, creating a stratified system of education where wealthy families had access to schooling and others did not.
The principles are a hopeful vision for the future of state-local relations, grounded in the lessons of more than 130 years of experience with home rule. They make clear that cities, towns and villages are fully capable of governing, and that states must have a healthy respect for the institutions of local democracy.
region to find out how home rule functions in practice. The results suggest that the standard story about home rule in Massachusetts is largely a myth. Indeed, promising but largely overlooked avenues for regional reform exist that would involve expanding—rather than limiting—home rule. Among the report’s key findings are: 1.
