AUGUSTA, Maine — Millicent MacFarland, a near-constant presence and seemingly endless fount of procedural knowledge in the Maine State House for 30 years, died Saturday.
MacFarland, a Democrat more commonly referred to simply as “Millie,” was the clerk of the House, a position she held for more than a decade from 2000 to 2010 and again from 2012 until her death. She battled cancer for several years.
“I’m deeply saddened by the passing of the Hon. Millie MacFarland,” said House Speaker Mark Eves, D-North Berwick, one of many public officials who offered eulogies for MacFarland in written statements Monday morning.
“In both my tenure as the speaker and as a member of the Legislature, Millie served as an adviser, a trusted friend, and a teacher to me and to the thousands of legislators that came through the House chamber under her watch,” Eves said. “Her expertise and commitment to public service guided us all. As clerk, she has been the unsung and quiet steady hand shepherding many of the laws that have shaped our state. We will all miss her at the rostrum, in the House chamber, and the halls of our great Capitol building.”
As clerk, MacFarland was responsible for managing the staff of the House of Representatives, as well as for the printing and distribution of bills, compilation of the House calendar and other administrative tasks.
The clerk is also the House Parliamentarian, responsible for maintaining a near-encyclopedic understanding of the rules of order in the House. In the most recent session, MacFarland was regularly seen consulting with Eves when questions of procedure arose.
As clerk in an era of term limits — Maine has limited membership in the House to four consecutive terms since the mid 1990s — MacFarland also took on an even more important role as a repository and source of institutional knowledge and was key in providing orientation to new lawmakers as they became accustomed to the operations of the House.
MacFarland was honored and respected by her peers nationally. She was a former president of the American Society of Legislative Clerks and Secretaries and a former executive committee member of the National Conference of State Legislatures. In 2010, MacFarland was appointed by the NCSL to a group of 16 state clerks responsible for the decennial update of Mason’s Manual of Legislative Procedure, the standard of parliamentary process for nearly every state legislature.
Not only renowned in her professional career, MacFarland also was a dedicated member of the Maine Democratic Party. The party presented its John T. Walker award to MacFarland in 2012.
“She worked tirelessly to identify and recruit good Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives. She was a soft but forceful presence at each recruitment meeting and on every House Democratic Campaign Committee conference call,” Attorney General Janet Mills said when introducing MacFarland at the Maine Democrats’ 2012 convention.
Mills called MacFarland “one of the pine trees of our party.”
“In our world, there are birch trees and willow trees that sway with the wind and break easily,” she said. “There are old hemlocks and crusty elms, which we look up to from a distance. And then there are the graceful pines, our state’s elegant symbol — tall, strong, reliable, beautiful.”
But despite her ties to the Democratic Party, MacFarland was respected and revered by lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. When Republicans took control of the House in 2010 and subsequently named a member of their own party as clerk, the new GOP majority still honored MacFarland’s departure with a unanimous joint resolution.
House Republican Leader Ken Fredette of Newport, said Monday he was “deeply saddened” by MacFarland’s death.
“Her knowledge of and respect for the legislative process was unparalleled and was crucial to the operations of the Maine House of Representatives for decades,” he said. “The House Republican caucus has Millie’s family and friends in our prayers during this difficult time.”
In December, the newly elected House of Representatives will elect a new clerk after being sworn in this December. Assistant Clerk of the House Robert Hunt will take over MacFarland’s responsibilities in the interim.
Follow Mario Moretto on Twitter at @riocarmine.
