Annexation Reform Blueprint & a Quiz

Getting ready for tomorrow's meeting of the Joint Commission Studying Municipal Annexation has gotten some help today from Daren Bakst, the Legal Analyst at the John Locke Foundation.

Daren's 'Blueprint for Annexation' policy report has been published online today. You can find it here and take a look at the ideas for reform that Daren outlines and backs up with the extensive research he has been doing on the issue.

After you read the report, consider sending Daren an email and let him know what you think about the report.
Then follow up that email to Daren with an email to the Study Commission members telling them about the 'Blueprint' along with your thoughts about it.

There is also a one day Quiz about annexation that Daren has started online at the JLF 'Locker Room' blog. Daren has the first two questions posted now and will be posting more as the day goes along. See how well you do with the questions about NC annexation laws while you get ready for the Commission meeting tomorrow.

If you cannot attend the meeting tomorrow, you can listen to the meeting live by going to the General Assembly website 'Audio' page and opening the audio link for "Appropriations Committee Room (Rm 643)".

The meeting starts tommorow morning at 9:30 am and is scheduled to last until 11:30 am. If you can attend or listen live, and you care about annexation reform, please do listen to this meeting. The more people we have who hear for themselves how this issue is being discussed by the Commission, the better it will be for the effort to reform the laws during next years' Legislative Session.

Thanks to ALL who have written to the Commission Members!

Cathy Heath

Joint Annexation Study Commission 12/17 meeting

The next meeting of the Joint Commission to Study Municipal Annexation is scheduled:

NOTE: TIME CHANGE

MEMORANDUM

TO:
Members of the Joint Legislative Study Commission on Municipal Annexation

FROM:
Senator Vernon Malone, Co-Chair
Senator R. C. Soles, Co-Chair
Representative D. Bruce Goforth, Co-Chair
Representative Paul Luebke, Co-Chair

SUBJECT:
Meeting Notice:
Due to the short time frame before session, any member that has recommendations they would like to present to the committee must do so on the 17th.

The Joint Legislative Study Commission on
Municipal Annexation will meet on the following date:

DATES:
Wednesday, December 17, 2008

TIME:
9:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

LOCATION:
Room 643 Legislative Office Building

Posted:
December 5, 2008

I hope that all of you who want to see NC Annexation Law changed have been writing, calling, and emailing the Joint Commission Members, letting them know what you want them to change about the annexation laws. http://www.stopncannexation.com/Joint_Committee.htm
Taking the time to do this is very important.

There are too many Legislators on the Joint Commission who think forced annexation is a good thing for North Carolina and the cities. The cities told them it was true, so they believe it.
These Legislators clearly haven't heard enough yet from the citizens who disagree. They need to hear a lot more from the citizens to balance out the years of repetition that they've heard from the cities.

If you can make it to Raleigh to attend the meeting on the 17th, that would be a real good way to emphasize the points you made in your previous communication with the Legislators. Think of your presence at the meeting as a visual underline and bold to what you wrote or said to them before the meeting. I wouldn't count on being able to say much more to them at this meeting. It doesn't look like the citizens are going to be given any other chances to weigh in about what needs to change. The meeting is only two hours long.

At the December 4th meeting, Chairman Malone became anxious to quickly adjourn the meeting soon after Professor Lawrence finished his presentation. He seemed more worried about getting to lunch on time than continuing any real discussion of the annexation issue. He also made it very clear that the December 17th meeting was going to be the "last call" for the members to weigh in with proposed changes. As you can see, this warning was repeated in the Official Notice of the meeting. There won't be much time to listen to all the members on this Commission.

A good number of the Senate Legislators on the Commission seem to be a bit bored with the excercise of holding these meetings and didn't have too much to say on the 4th.
It's almost like they don't think they really have any work to do.

Could it be that all the work has been done, or will be done, outside of these meetings?
I'd say yes.
And the rumors are going around from people closer to what's really going on that the Chairs are planning to meet with League Officials on the 16th.
I'd say the League has already had their private session with some of these Legislators and have given them the "approved" changes for the Commission to recommend.

Here is my “crystal ball” prediction on the final recommendations.

The final recommendations (as the Senate side will propose) are going to:

1. Require all cities to adopt long range “Annexation Plans” like Charlotte and Raleigh currently use.


2. Require all cities to offer amortized financing terms for water and sewer development charges.


3. Tighten the statutory language that the cities ‘get around’ in order to annex narrow strips of land.


4. Set up a State fund to help all cities pay for the water and sewer infrastructure when they annex low income/minority areas.

Recommendation 4 works nicely with the mission of the 'Institute for Emerging Issues' that the NC League of Municipalities helped establish at NCSU and now promotes.

The NCLM is really expanding their reach and influence into more and more aspects of government and policy all the time.

I'll report more on that another time.

Annexation Study Commission Meeting

The first meeting of the Joint Commission to Study Municipal Annexation held this morning was quite interesting.

I arrived just before the start of the meeting. When I stepped out of the elevator and turned toward the meeting room, I saw people overflowing out of the double doors. When I walked into the meeting room it was standing room only and most of the people attending were citizens dressed in the signature red attire.

There were plenty of city officials and bureaucrats, but they were far outnumbered by the people who would like to see the municipalities reined in and stopped from abusing taxpaying property owners across North Carolina. These citizens included familiar faces of some who have been in this battle against forced annexation for many years, like Walter Murphy from Fayetteville. Today they were joined by some of the new faces of the latest victims of the horrible law, including the homeowners from Oak Level being annexed against their will into Rocky Mount.

The meeting itself turned out just as I thought it would in many respects. The Chair, Senator Malone, started the meeting by stating that there would be no time given to the public for comments. The meeting was going to be devoted to David Lawrence's presentation explaining the Annexation Statutes. It was an "informational meeting only" for the Senate members who had firmly declined at the end of the session in 2007 to be a part of the study that many House members wanted.

I talked to David Owens on that day in 2007 to try to find out why the Senate was refusing to endorse the study. His explanation was that the Senate remembers the last time annexation was studied and they didn't want to go through that again. All the time it took up! All the people beseiging the legislature about the issue! Not again!!

Funny how they remembered that much about the last study, but they now need a refresher course on the General Statutes that they are responsible for. It was apparently real important for them to hear David Lawrence from the School of Government explain annexation law to them again for the umpteenth time.

Kind of looks like an excuse to blow some of the extremely limited time this Commission has to examine what is actually going on in the real world of forced annexation. Hey! I have an idea! Just give our side a decent chance to tell them what's wrong with it and how to fix it.

But on the subject of someone speaking up about what's wrong with the law today, there were quite a number of the Commission members who weren't shy at all about laying the problems out on the table.

Larry Brown, Nelson Dollar, and Trudy Walend fired the opening salvos with questions for Professor Lawrence. They had questions about how other States deal with annexation; how NC cities are using annexation like a weapon against neighboring cities with the property owners being used like pawns. Questions about how the cities are providing (or not) water and sewer and other services. Rep. Walend tried to get Lawrence to explain the "five day window" that citizens have to submit applications for hook up in order to make the city bring the lines all the way to their property.
Lawrence was clearly trying to answer the questions "diplomatically" and Larry Brown 'called him out' on that. It looked to me like Lawrence was being very careful not to answer in a way that might upset the city lobbyists. He dodged any mention of the five day window until Larry Brown pinned him down on it. Go Trudy! Go Larry!

Nelson Dollar brought up the Nolan vs. Marvin case where the NC Supreme Court decided that annexing cities should actually have services to offer. Larry Brown brought up the problem with cities that really don't have significant "urban" services to offer being able to forcibly annex. He mentioned the other case that the Nolans took to court when Weddington also tried to annex their land.

Doug Aitken brought up the issue of what the members of the 1959 Study [that recommended giving cities the power to forcibly annex] were saying about the reasons to do it that would justify overruling the property rights of the citizens. This led to more interesting talk about provision of services and how much things have changed since 1959. Back then, only the cities were providing water, sewer, and zoning. Now we have Counties and special authorities providing these things and more. Dependence on cities for modern services is obsolete and it's time the cities face up to it and the legislature adapt State law to that fact of life.

Professor Lawrence ended up saying "I don't know" quite a few times during that meeting.

Lawrence was asked to explain the role of the Local Goverment Commission. That ended up being quite interesting and worthwhile.
Lawrence explained how NC is unique in having the 'LGC' as guardians of the fiscal health of the cities. He explained how the LGC was created during the 1930's depression when NC cities were going bankrupt. He gave the LGC the high credit for keeping the cities bond ratings high.

Yes, that's right, it is the fact that NC has the LGC providing fiscal oversight that keeps those city Bond Ratings high, _NOT forced annexation, (which represents a fraction of the growth of the cities). Having a few 'city initiated' annexations blocked by the property owners would not likely have a impact on the bond rating.

McCarley, Wegner, and Soles made feeble attempts to spin the discussion more in favor of the cities, but it wasn't working. Foriest tried to explore the possibly unconstitutional idea of establishing a pro-rated tax structure to make up for any delays in service provision.

The two County officials on the Commission, Grainger Barrett and Tina Hall, stepped up to the plate and threw some pitches toward the negative affect of city annexations on County revenue. This is where Wegner tried to shoot down the idea that it affected County balance sheets at all, but Ms. Hall came back and quickly put that attempt in it's place. Go Tina!

After all of this, I can tell you that the really good stuff was saved for last. In the end, Earl Jones spoke up and said that he'd like to see some statistics about the fiscal health of cities in other States where forced annexation is not an option. He wanted this data so the Commission could move past that and get down to doing the work of addressing the House Committee's concerns about protecting and restoring the property rights of citizens. YEAH Rep Jones!

Rep. Goforth seconded Rep. Jones comments and pointed out that the Commission needs to "get on target" because their time to do anything is short. YEAH Rep Goforth!
(Message to Goforth and Jones: We, the affected citizens, feel so marginalized in this debate that we strongly suspect that the final recommendations of the Commission have already been written. We'd like to help you change that.)

Chairman Malone was ready to wrap up the meeting and get out of there after that. He told all the members that they had better attend the next meeting because if the didn't their input would not be included in the final recommendations. Sounds pretty final to me. Dec 17th and "that's all folks!" was the message sent.

Larry Brown had the final suggestion of the day. He recommended that the Commission move the Dec 17th meeting to the auditorium or somewhere larger that would accomodate more of the public who want to attend. YEAH!
Stay tuned and you might want to plan to add yourself to the fun at that meeting.
Although I don't think that more three minute comments are going to add much to the debate, a large crowd hanging over the Commission's shoulders would definitely be _as Ms. Stewart says_ a "good thing".

Annexation Study Committees_ the end game

So here "we"* are....
(*those in the effort to put an end to forced annexation)
And where is that?

"We" have, collectively, over the last ten years or so, been working toward putting an end to forced annexation. Yes, at least ten years. That is how long it's been since the New Hanover Good Neighbors group started the effort to go beyond battling their offending local City Council and took the battle through the courts to the Federal Fourth Circuit.

During the time frame when this GNU group poured their hearts and souls and resources into this judicial odyssey, the General Assembly had a Committee working on a study of municipal annexation. This study was authorized in 1996, and it took two years before the resulting Bill and legislation came forward in 1998.

Some type of outcry for reform has actually been ongoing for over thirty years. There were studies done in the 1980's also. You can find the records of the 1980 study and more at the School of Government website, where new pages of information have been added, dedicated to the history and current events in the annexation legislation battle:
http://www.sog.unc.edu/programs/annexation/history.php

The New Hanover Good Neighbors found the time and the commitment to attend all of those Study Commission meetings, in addition to pursuing their case through the courts. They presented recommendations to the committee that reflected the wishes of affected landowners. So what did the 1998 Commission do with those recommendations?
To read the record of these meetings should be quite enlightening to anyone today who feels equally committed to getting the law changed.

For starters in the lesson on how "annexation studies" have gone and what they have produced in changes to the law, take a look at the report from the 1980 study: LINK HERE

If nothing else, just look at the table of contents.
What do you see? Does it look familiar??
As Solomon lamented in Ecclesiastes, "There is nothing new under the sun."

As you read through this document, notice that this Committee, authorized by the Legislature, was comprised entirely of members from the League of Municipalities and the County Commissioners Association. You might also note that the tone and conclusions are dominated by the Municipal League's point of view. The County Commissioners Association folded in 1980 and failed to really stand up for what is right. We now have signs that some of our County officials are pushing back.

In this early study, you can also read ALL of the very same arguments for forced annexation that we continue to hear today over and over. When you read the city boosters claim that the NC annexation law was judged the best in the nation, know that the "authority" that they fall back on is an opinion from the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations on the merits of consolidation.
The ACIR opinion that they hold onto is an OLD opinion; based on an early view that urban areas should be consolidated. The cities were well represented on the ACIR Commission in the 50's and 60's. The ACIR has since revised their opinion on the benefit of consolidation, as evidence to the contrary has become apparent.
But the NCLM lobbyists know that they can conveniently skip over inconvenient facts, and continue to spew propaganda, because it has worked for them every time so far.

Well__Don't you feel like the time has come to say "ENOUGH"!! ?

ENOUGH with the studies!
ENOUGH with the NCLM approved tweaks to the law!
ENOUGH with throwing aside the input and recommendations from the landowners who have been run roughshod over with laws that enable predatory annexation by municipalities!

Enough with trotting out the same pro-city presentations by David Lawrence from the School of Government and half hour presentations by the Director of the League of Municipalities and City Attorneys, while shutting out presentations from policy experts who think the annexation law has serious flaws.

ENOUGH with "Annexation Studies" PACKED with known city apologists for keeping the law intact. Names and faces that show up on the roster of the Committees over and over again. Names like Clodfelter and Wegner to name a couple.

"WE" should be students of history in the annexation debate and savvy enough to learn from it. "We" should be able to recognize when the "dog & pony show" is being trotted out for the benefit of the record and the cities while the people are once again being run off into the weeds with a sham.

It should be abundantly clear that this 'Joint Legislative Committee on Municipal Annexation' is, and was always meant to be, a SHAM.
I, for one, will take no comfort out of being able to say "that's what I thought would happen" _after it is all over with.

The House Select Committee, the one that the Joint Committee swallowed up and disarmed, was born out of some sincerity towards reforming the law, and to moving the conversation in the right direction, but that Committee has been cut off at the knees. The members are still at the table, but they have been outnumbered. The defenders of city power are swaggeringly confident that they have everything, including the outcome, well within their control. The evidence of this is screaming at anyone paying attention:

1) The Senate had been refusing for over a year to participate in another study. When they felt the overwhelming outcry from all of us, they jumped in at the last minute with this Joint Commission as 'damage control'.

2) The timing gives them no time to legitimately study what should be done. Lots of available excuses for why they won't meet more than once or twice; _the elections, _the holidays, _the legislative deadline on the lifespan of the committee.

This commission is legislatively required to end the moment that the 2009 Session begins. Extension of its existence is not up for negotiation. Another Commission would have to be formed. Consider that State Law does not allow study commissions to meet while the General Assembly is in session. Even Standing Committees must meet between sessions and during recesses.

The writing is on the wall that the Joint Commission's "recommendations" are already written, hatched behind the scenes, and ready to launch.

The first meeting on December 4th is already scheduled to be taken up by another rerun of having David Lawrence explain NC Annexation Law. Every legislator on the Commission has heard this presentation before, but it's a handy time filler.

The Senate leadership clearly intended to stifle the conversation, not help it along. They clearly wanted to control what came out of any Annexation Study Committee and not to honestly listen to any arguments against forced annexation. Remember the arrogance with which they blocked the Moratorium Bill!

The friendly Legislators on the Commission need to hear from you encouraging them to stand up for what is right and for what the people want.

The unfriendly Legislators need to hear what the "line in the sand" is for the people and that anything less will be vocally opposed by the people! Tell them you know they are 'cooking the books' as to what comes out of this Commission!

Let them all know that no matter what they do, WE ARE ALL WATCHING!

REMEMBER that it was the increasing outcry from growing numbers of people across the State that made the House take action and the Senate scramble to regain control of where the annexation issue was going!!
THAT IS OUR STRENGTH!!
THAT IS OUR AVENUE TO SUCCESS in achieving the end of forced annexation!

We should learn from history and not let ourselves be led down a path to repeat it. The people need to take control of this issue in the General Assembly. This strategy requires more than just a couple of citizens on the Study Commission. It is going to take all the same efforts and response that hundreds (thousands?) of people took that pushed the Moratorium Bill through the House successfully and restored it from a gutting. That kind of grassroots outcry multiplied several times over is our strength and what is needed.

WE all need to enlist our friendly legislators to submit and sponsor one Bill that spells out what we, the affected people, really want. Then WE need to focus ALL of a unified grassroots outcry, like the outcry evident last session, toward the General Assembly, behind that one Bill.

Joint Annexation Study Committee

Well... Hackney and Basnight finally got around to appointing the members of the Joint House & Senate Study Committee. The Senate decided at the last minute they wanted to be involved in the discussion of annexation reform.
So here it is.

The last minute move by the Senate to jump into this "Study", (after they refused to have anything to do with it in 2007), looked real suspicious when the plan was announced at the end of the '08 Short Session. I suspect they aren't jumping in to be helpful to the people.

Daren Bakst has some interesting comments about the Committee makeup on the JLF Locker Room Blog.

It has taken the Leadership so long to appoint the members that it was starting to look like they were delaying on purpose.
AND SENATOR TONY RAND WAS APPOINTED!!

There is very little time left for the Committee to meet before the end of the year. The Long Session of 2009 begins in January.

Between now and then, we have the Holidays and a major election season to deal with. Many of these Committee members are up for re-election. It doesn't bode well for having any serious debate or analysis of the problems with the current annexation laws_ or any recommendations that resemble anything close to what the hundreds of people who spoke up for while the House Study Committee was looking at the laws and problems.

After playing this game with "Study Committees" for nearly a year, it might be time to change focus. Like I said, there are a good number of Legislators on this Committee who we already know are against the people ever being heard over the city advocates.

Some of them have good people running against them who could use more support from the people.
Check the "Candidates Page"

This election needs to send a message to the General Assembly. A message that rings louder than the outcry they heard at the Public Hearings and Rallies.A message that entrenched incumbents understand!
"YER OUTTA HERE!"

In the meantime, the contact information for all committee members is provided for the annexation reform warriors to use. These people should hear from us right away and regularly.
Get ready to push hard on the Legislators in 2009.
We know what we want and so do they.
The Legislators have studied this before many times.
It's time to act.

A Picture of Predatory Annexation...

Fayetteville Forcibly Annexing Again!!

(click here to view)

Dennis Draughon Freelance Aug 3, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

State of Annexation Reform

After all the activity and effort put into trying to get the one recommendation that came out of the House Select Committee to Study Municipal Annexation to pass into law, it has been fairly quiet as far as further action from the General Assembly.

Yes...they adjourned the Short Session, and allowed Senator Rand to file the Moratorium Bill in the round file under his desk, but the Senate as a whole responded to the pressure from all of the calls and letters from people across NC. In response, the Senate decided that they would now have a joint committee to take over what the House Select Committee had decided to accomplish on their own. This is an 'about face' after the Senate flatly refused to have anything to do with an annexation study at the end of the 2007 Long Session.
Without the tireless and committed efforts of so many networked people over the last year or so, I doubt that the Senate would be joining the conversation right now.

But let's not pop any champagne corks over this turn of events just yet. Let's take a cold hard look at other possible motivators for this move by the Senate. The devil is going to be in the details with this Study Committee and we have to be realistic about the potential pitfalls. A look at the potential pros and cons would be useful:

Pros:

• We have both the House and the Senate studying the issue.
• We have a targeted opportunity to educate the Senate about what the cities are doing from our perspective and front line experience.
• Resulting changes to the law might move more quickly through to passage.

Cons:

• The size of this Committee will increase the time spent in debate.
  
• The membership of the Committee could end up weighted in favor of the cities.
• Much of the discussion that has already taken place with the House Committee will have to be repeated.
• The opinions of the House Select Committee members will be diluted and possibly outnumbered by the additional members.
• Consensus will be more difficult to achieve.
  

Most of you are probably familiar with the quote "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it's mistakes". That is why we need to understand what has been done and what has been said on both sides of the issue before today. If we think that we are breaking new ground and bringing new information to today's discussion, when in reality we are simply re-inventing the wheel, we give our opponents the advantage in this discussion more than they already have. We can't afford to kid ourselves about the level of skill that our opposition has acquired over the years in defending itself against possible arguments we bring to the table.

The NCLM has been down this road many times before. Their counterparts in other States have gone through these challenges before also. They are networked on a National scale to hone their skills together against the waves of protest that build to the point where the State lawmakers react with a 'Study'. The National League of Cities is the umbrella for the defense of annexation laws that favor cities and the NCLM Director holds a key position in the NLC. They collectively have lawyers and staff by the legion and dedicated funding just for this kind of defense.

On the reform side of the battlefield, the troops are often outnumbered Legislators who believe that forced annexation is wrong on principle, along with varying numbers of people from a new crop of citizen activists; people who have been recently handed the task of absorbing laws and historical facts about municipal annexation in a crash course time frame. Valiant efforts have been undertaken by some of these groups, progress made, and small successes achieved at times, but the goal for true reform remained.
It's a tall order to drink all that in and put it all in historical perspective in order to effectively take the conversation and the effort for reform to a higher level of success, but I believe we can do it if we are informed, realistic, and committed to an extended effort.

We have already spontaneously created a new element in the annexation battle in North Carolina, and that is the connected, coordinated activity, information sharing, and brainstorming between all the various groups across the State. This has never been achieved before.
Less than four years ago, the groups of property owners who rose up and organized to fight against forced annexation were fighting in isolation, unaware of similar efforts being waged in some other part of the State. Each group focused singularly on what seemed to be the logical target for their efforts; the offending City Government; not realizing until it was nearly over that the laws on the books in Raleigh were stacked against their success. Taxes were saved, lawyers were paid, but eventually new city residents were forced to accept their new status and they moved on the best that they could. We now refuse to leave it at that and that is progress in the right direction!

Let's use a knowledge of history and arm ourselves to take the battle to a higher level.
After spending some time researching and looking at the past committees on annexation, useful information is revealed. The goal was to see how the membership of these past studies were decided, what prompted the study, who was involved, what was said, and what the resulting changes to the annexation laws were.

There was one significant study in 1983 that produced law changes and another in 1998.
The 1983 Study produced significant changes to the law, and some changes that all of us who've had to fight forced annexation have come to know. The 1998 study has some interesting details regarding what prompted it, the public involvement, and what it accomplished.

I'll be posting the related information that I have found regarding these studies to the StopNCAnnexation "Resources" page soon.

For now, for our side of this effort for reform, the immediate task at hand is to continue to contact Senators and Representatives about who is going to selected as members for the Committee. The NCLM has been given two seats at the table and that will be in addition to the one member of the House Select Committee that they had in Judith Wegner. Past studies have allowed the NCLM to choose city officials for members, but the language in the current study is written in a way that would allow Ellis Hankins himself to be a member.
Two seats will go to the County Commissioners Association to choose, and they are likewise open to seating direct members of their organization. This is another place where we need to try to steer the selection toward members who aren't "in the pocket" of the city advocates.

The rest of the members are at the discretion of Speaker Hackney and Pres. Pro Tem Basnight. The language doesn't specify legislators only, but selecting legislators has been the tendency in the past, unless otherwise specifically stated that a citizen or delagate from an interest group was to be chosen, assurances from legislative staff not withstanding.

Let's continue to weigh in with the Legislators about this Committee, because they need to start picking the members and get down to work. How much can they get done before the elections and Holidays even if they start ASAP? Let's not stand idly by and let them use delay tactics without a fight.