Regionalization: It’s the buzzword of the 21st century in Maine.

From our ambulances to our prisons, it’s a term that inhabits every discussion of every service government has to offer. Gov. Baldacci keynoted the idea in his State of the State address, pointing to the reign of the Guay brothers as mayors of Lewiston and Auburn and announcing the award of a grant to support the Clifford-Steckino task force the Guays have established to look at ways to reduce duplication in local government in L-A.

However venturesome these efforts might seem, there’s nothing new in Lewiston, Auburn or elsewhere in Maine about efforts to get out of the geographic box.

Take the 1869 law, for example, that decreed, “The city of Auburn is hereby annexed to and made a part of the city of Lewiston.”

The only catch to this mandate was a clause requiring ratification by Auburn and Lewiston voters before it could officially take effect. Auburn was directed to vote first, and when it did the city came within 16 votes of agreeing to one of the most significant municipal wedding in Maine. Instead, the city vetoed betrothal 370-354.

Because the bill did not allow for a vote in Lewiston until Auburn’s approval, a vote there never occurred, but passage seemed likely since it was Auburn that was to renounce its maiden name, leaving Lewiston’s identity undisturbed.

The post-Civil War showdown on Lewiston-Auburn unification came during an era when re-mapping the limits of towns and cities elsewhere in Maine was more common than it is today. Shortly before the 1869 vote, Auburn was itself the recipient of an annexation that nearly doubled its size. This came with the addition of its neighbor to the south, Danville, until 1867 a separate town, which Gov. Chamberlain and the Legislature annexed to Auburn despite Danville’s own vote against the merger.

By the time of Auburn’s own move from town to city status in 1869, it was, at 67 square miles, geographically the largest city in Maine, an accolade that has since been eclipsed only by Ellsworth, Presque Isle and Caribou.

Two years later it was Greater Portland’s turn to keep cartographers busy. Deering separated from Westbrook, which resulted in Westbrook losing more than half of its area to the new town. Besides Deering, it also lost Woodfords and Stroudwater.

Awarded a charter that transformed it from a town into a city in 1892, Deering merged into Portland in 1899. Its Westbrook roots continue to be celebrated by the Stevens Avenue location of “Westbrook College” even though it’s been well over a century since it has been a part of the city to which it owes its name.

The late 19th century shift in municipal boundaries of the Portland area also witnessed the creation of what is now Maine’s fourth most populous city, South Portland. This occurred with its 1895 separation from Cape Elizabeth.

The fervor for municipal separation also caught on further up the coast in 1897 with the creation of Stonington. It was broken off from Deer Isle.

South Portland and Stonington were both taking a page from the book of several other towns, including Old Orchard, emancipated from Saco in 1883. These were but a few of those following a well-worn path that included the original Portland, Cape Elizabeth and Westbrook, each spun off from Falmouth. Freeport, Harpswell, Cumberland and Yarmouth were delivered from the womb of the once mammoth North Yarmouth, “north” because it was so situated from its Cape Cod progenitor.

The impetus to redraw the map of Maine seemed to abate in the 20th century. Nevertheless Dover and Foxcroft formed a single town in 1922, West Paris broke off from Paris in 1957, Long Island left Portland in 1993, and Frye Island left Standish in 1998.

This slowdown can be attributed to the emergence of new boutique entities that bypassed town and city governments in responding to the demand for local services.

Citizens who wanted to escape from a larger municipal household without completely leaving home could now, for example, use special purpose village corporations. These were typically called upon to meet the need for public water, fire and sometimes police protection in the more congested portions of some towns. The part of Wells that was Ogunquit achieved this status in 1913 before it became a town of its own in 1980. York Beach and Farmington Village were among the others.

The need for some boundaries to expand rather than contract called into existence another species of government that also otherwise left town and city limits intact. This happened most notably in 1904 with the creation of a water district that crossed town and city lines in the Waterville area, a model that three years later would inspire Portland and some of its suburbs to wrap themselves in the district package for the same purpose.

The century’s first decade also saw many towns pooling their resources to hire a school superintendent in what were known as “unions.” By the 1960s, most of these would be more tightly cemented into the school administrative district or SAD system we know today.

Local governments in Maine today are being urged by many to follow the lead of business in moving toward consolidation. Though this is often a just cause and is championed by many media and academic opinion leaders, our experience has shown that autonomy and flexibility are also important values, ones that cannot always be addressed by an expansion of government geography.

Indeed, if bigger was always better, we would still be paying homage to the British, Russia would still be a Cold War adversary within the multinational USSR, and Maine would still be part of Massachusetts.

Paul H. Mills is a Farmington attorney well known for his analyses and historical understanding of Maine’s political scene. He can be reached by e-mail: pmills@midmaine.com

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