Debating Annexation Law

No matter what your political pursuasion happens to be, if you are one of the thousands of people in North Carolina who now knows about the Annexation Laws of NC and are opposed to the concept, I hope that you will take the time to read some of the excellent work that the policy analysts at the John Locke Foundation are publishing about the annexation laws.

This State has been saturated for decades with rhetoric without substance from the NC Municipal League Lobbyists and helped along by the School of Government. (More about that in another post) Now, at last, there is somewhere else to turn to for some well researched analysis of the NC annexation laws.

First, I would recommend the "A Blueprint for Annexation Reform", written last month by Daren Bakst. Mr. Bakst is the legal analyst at JLF. You can read his 'Spotlight' about the paper and download the paper itself for reading later by using the link above.

This paper supports the growing consensus among more legislators about three key problems regarding forced annexation as it is being done by the cities, now 50 years from the time the law was enacted;

• To provide a meaningful voice for the affected property owners
  
• To define and require truly meaningful services in city initiated annexations
  
• To create meaningful third party oversight of city initiated annexations.
  

The paper makes very good recommendations for reforming the laws. Every legislator who will be called upon to weigh in on passing good legislation to reform the law (and that would be all of them) should obtain and read "The Blueprint".

There is also an interesting post by Daren on the Locker Room Blog exposing some truths about the oft heard claim that NC Annexation Law is "a model for the nation".
Daren looked into this claim by researching the documents that were cited to back this claim and found some serious misleading going on with the claim.
"The Big Lie of NC Annexation: Exposed"

I'm pretty confident that there is a lot of fertile ground in the rest of those 'talking points' for uncovering more like this.

I'm counting on seeing more good stuff coming from the John Locke analysts like Daren about the annexation laws as well as more truth exposed about the "talking points" from the city lobbyists.

Thanks guys!