North Carolinians could gain new tools in the fight against forced annexation if the General Assembly follows through on issues raised by an annexation study group.
“I think when you boil it down, what is concerning homeowners and property owners more than anything else in involuntary annexation is they simply believe that the power of government is coming down on them and they truly have no redress — no really effective redress,” said Rep. Nelson Dollar, R-Wake, during the first meeting Wednesday of the N.C. House Select Committee on Municipal Annexation.
“You certainly have public hearings, and you have notifications, and things like this, but in terms of actually having any ability to affect how that involuntary annexation is going to happen and how the decision is going to be made by the town, today they have no real effective voice,” Dollar said.
Lawmakers from both parties used the meeting to highlight concerns about annexation laws. The committee’s cochairman, Rep. Bruce Goforth, D-Buncombe, expressed concern that some cities target rural areas that have high property values and little need for municipal services.
“I think the huge concern out there is that there are subdivisions being built that are really not contiguous to the cities that are close, and you annex [land between the city and new subdivision] to get to the subdivision, which already has the infrastructure in, and there’s no money out of pocket [for city taxpayers], and that’s a huge concern,” he said.
Rep. Louis Pate, R-Wayne, made a similar point. “I would like for the staff to look at cases in which a voluntary annexation is used as a bridge later on to get the city in a position to make an involuntary annexation, in which the voluntary annexation is a bridge over to other areas that the city probably was ultimately interested in to start off with.”
The process is not limited to pricey new developments, Dollar said. “You have intact communities that have been paying to the county — supporting the schools, supporting county libraries, county parks maybe for 30 or 40 years — and then a city, by its own actions, had been voluntarily annexing and building communities out to that existing community. Now it’s saying, ‘Well, we’re at your doorstep, so you’ve got to give to us, even though the people we’ve put at your doorstep may have only been there six months or six years.’”
Even lawmakers who touted some benefits from annexation laws conceded the potential for problems. “It has kind of gotten out of hand in the last 10 to 15 years,” said Rep. Earl Jones, D-Guilford. “Some people are concerned that annexation — the motivation may be more financial versus anything that’s urban in nature. So those are the issues I think we’ll probably have to address.”
N.C. annexation laws present other problems, Goforth said. “One of the other things that I hear a lot about is the opportunity to [have] a voice in the process,” he said. “The concern is you get annexed and two years later, you get to vote on the city council or mayor. Is there a possibility — I think it’s something we need to look at — that if we’re preparing for annexation a year away, there’s got to be an election cycle between the time they start the process until they’re actually annexed?”
A city can annex land now, even if the land does not touch the current city limits, through a process known as “satellite” annexation. “Satellite” annexation is supposed to be limited to territory that does not exceed 10 percent of the land area of the existing community. At least one lawmaker has concerns about the way that rule is enforced.
“We’ve done hundreds and hundreds of little towns that we remove the 10-percent rule,” said Rep. Edgar Starnes, R-Caldwell. “And it seems to me like we need to go back and establish a policy that’s good for the state of North Carolina and then adhere to it. I’m guilty. I voted for every one of these little local bills because they’re local bills…. The effect is we have no policy.”
Even if people targeted for annexation gain no new tools to fight the process, they need some guarantee that they will see the services promised under existing state laws, Goforth said. “More of the e-mails that I get are people that have been annexed into the city, and they don’t have the services, and there’s no requirement and no timeframe for them to get the services,” he said. “I think that’s unfair, and I think that’s something this committee wants to address — maybe in a bill — that if you’re annexed, you should have those services, and there should be a timeframe to get those services if you continue to pay taxes.”
A representative of the Fair Annexation Coalition called on the House committee to consider the rights of people targeted for annexation. “My overall feeling about where we are with this law today is that there’s no balance in the law, and the law is heavily weighted on the side of the municipality,” said Doug Aiken of Pinehurst. “The individual citizen who’s about to be annexed has minimal avenues available to them.”
North Carolina’s annexation laws should be “significantly reformed to protect the citizens of North Carolina,” according to a Statement of Principles adopted by more than a dozen North Carolina groups, including the John Locke Foundation. The groups unveiled their statement hours before the House committee meeting.
Existing annexation laws “are not achieving the goal of providing urban services to communities that truly need services,” according to the statement. The laws “encourage the duplication of services to communities that do not need urban services,” and they are “inherently flawed because municipalities have a disincentive to help communities most in need and have an incentive to annex communities for financial gain.”
Instead North Carolina’s annexation laws should “reflect the reality that sound urban services can be provided through private sources equally as well as government sources,” according to the statement. The laws “should provide property owners subject to possible annexation a direct and meaningful representative process to challenge the annexation,” and they “should ensure that annexations, both involuntary and voluntary, are applied in an equal manner to all individuals and communities.”
In addition to the John Locke Foundation, groups endorsing the statement are: Americans for Prosperity-North Carolina, Biltmore Lake Community Action Committee, Blue Springs-Hoke County Community Development Corporation, Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities, Cumberland County Citizens United, Fair Annexation Coalition, Good Neighbors United (Wayne County), Johnston County Citizens for Justice, North Carolina FreedomWorks/CSE, North Carolina Property Rights Coalition, North Carolina State Grange, StopNCAnnexation, StTOP (Stop the Taking of Pinewild), and Voices for Justice.
“The willingness of these groups to unite behind these basic principles demonstrates the clear need for substantive annexation reform in North Carolina,” said Daren Bakst, JLF Legal and Regulatory Policy Analyst. “All of these groups agree that North Carolina’s citizens need significant annexation reforms to protect them from the major flaws imbedded in the existing laws.”
Mitch Kokai is associate editor of Carolina Journal.