Despite the constitutional prohibition the legislature has embedded a complex corporate network of corporations that serve as "an instrumentality of the state" and declared to be "essential government functions" and are linked to a network of "public-private relationships" also referred to as 'quasis" and business consortiums". This has largely occurred since 1977 when the Maine Legislature chartered the Maine Development Foundation as a non-profit corporation to serve as an instrumentality of the state with the expressed intent to establish legislative authority to centrally manage Maine's economy: