Background and Acknowledgment

Over the past few years, a coalition of state government officials has been advocating the increased use and improved access to information of consensus based processes. As a result of their efforts, in May 1999 the Maine Legislature passed a Law (L.D. 2131) to amend the Administrative Procedure Act. The purpose of this law is to "Ensure that the Agency Use of Collaborative Decision-making and Stakeholder Processes are Fair and Consistent with the goals of the Maine Administrative Procedure Act." This law was specifically designed to address one form of consensus-based process -- negotiated rulemaking.

The Maine Department of Labor was tasked with creating a working group to address the prescriptions set forth by the legislature, as well as develop information on best practices for Consensus Processes, and make this information available to all state agencies. The information on this web site is intended to serve that purpose.

The information of this web site draws heavily from "A Practical Guide to Consensus," written by Jim Arthur, Christine Carlson, and Lee Moore. "A Practical Guide to Consensus" is a product of the Policy Consensus Initiative (PCI). PCI can be reached at www.policyconsensus.org. The working group wishes to thank PCI for its willingness to allow the State of Maine to benefit from its fine materials.