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by the legislature. Not only did both require some affirmative assurance 
that municipalities could enact measures for thelr own governance 
without seeking prior legislation or even prior legislative approval, 
but they also required the establishment of some relatively clear limits 
on the ability of the legislature to interfere with and annul local govern- 
mental action. The solution to these two problems required some form 
of home rule enactment. Because of the existence of Dillon’s Rule in 
its courts, the only effective form of home rule enactment in Massa- 
chusetts could be an amendment to the State constitution. 
The constitution was so amended in 1966.”° The actual effect of 
that amendment on the status of cities and towns in the Common- 
wealth, however, is not yet exactly clear. In large part this uncertainty 
results from the dual functions of a home rule amendment: as a grant 
of local power and as a limitation on State legislative power. 
In both its aspects the home rule amendment bears upon the efficacy 
and legitimacy of a new communities statute drawn to operate through 
a public corporation on a statewide basis. Insofar as the fact of the 
home rule grant, or any ordinance or bylaw passed under that grant, 
might nullify statewide new communities legislation in a particular 
municipality, the efficacy of such an approach to new community 
creation has found most “clearly and directly” to be public purposes— 
the very facilities the new communities corporation was designed to 
provide. Furthermore, the proposed statute in part III clearly sets 
out in section 8 the very kinds of principles and standards necessarily 
precedent to land acquisitiont hat would quiet public and judicial 
unease at the possibility of uncontrolled eminent domain takings. 
Although no case precisely analogous to that posed by new com- 
munities legislation has come before the court as yet, the direction in 
which the court has been moving in the area of eminent domain sug- 
gests that the court could uphold a delegation of the general court’s 
eminent domain power to a public new communities corporation under 
an enabling act containing carefully drawn guidelines and a strong 
legislative finding of public purpose. 
1. Boundary adjustment 
The second home rule limitation on the power of the legislature 
to act through a statewide new communities corporation concerns the 
matter of boundary adjustment. Unlike the limitation on land as- 
sembly, which required a determination of those general law powers 
‘in relation to cities and towns” the legislature could delegate and 
those which it could not, the home rule amendment is explicit about 
the special law power to affect municipal corporation boundaries: it 
is the general court that may enact a special law— - 
(S)olely for the incorporation, or dissolution of cities and towns as corporate 
entities, alteration of city or town boundaries and merger or consolidation of cities 
and towns, or any of these matters.!!! 
Although this language does not exclude a delegate from exercising 
these compulsory functions for the legislature, the reasons rebutting 
such a delegation are persuasive. As a matter of logic it would be 
absurd to allow one incorporated entity of the State—a public new 
community development corporation—to alter the status of another 
such incorporated entity—a municipal corporation of the State. As a 
“120 19 Massachusetts Constitution, am. art. 89. 
121 Massachusetts Constitution, am. art. 89, section 8(4). 
