A Senate bill that would relieve a southeastern North Carolina planning organization from financial consequences resulting from the use of the controversial Map Act passed the House on Wednesday and will return to the Senate.
Senate Bill 654, the planning organization bill, passed the House by a 110-1 vote. Since a different version cleared the Senate by a 48-0 margin, the bill will return to that body for concurrence. If the Senate does not accept changes made in the House, a conference committee will work out the differences.
S.B. 654 requires the N.C. Department of Transportation to assume the legal and financial liabilities resulting from the Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization’s filing of corridor maps under the state’s Map Act. The planning organization and its members would not be liable for legal claims.
Following the enactment of a 2006 law, the Wilmington MPO filed a map under the Map Act for the U.S. 17 bypass project in Hampstead.
The Map Act, enacted in 1987, allows NCDOT and other governing bodies to adopt and file transportation corridor maps, allowing governing bodies to prevent building permits from being issued on property listed in those corridors.
By preventing further development, the Map Act depresses the property value that NCDOT would have to pay the property owner at the time the condemnation is complete.
Sen. Michael Lee, who sponsored the bill, on Tuesday told the House Transportation Committee that the Wilmington MPO was trying to select the best corridor for the bypass.
“While they were in that process, they saw the corridor developing somewhat rapidly,” Lee said. “So what they did was see this authority to get the map recorded so they could establish the corridor a little earlier, which was of benefit to obviously not just the WMPO but also to NCDOT. They were acting essentially as an agent of DOT because the WMPO doesn’t have the eminent domain authority.”
Lee noted that NCDOT is already involved in litigation involving the Map Act.
In February, a three-judge panel of the N.C. Court of Appeals ruled that filings under the state’s Map Act amounted to the taking of property, initiating requirements that the state pay just compensation to the landowners.
The appeals court case dealt with Map Act filings in Forsyth County, but could lead to similar judgments the Wilmington area lawsuit as well as other areas of the state. The transportation department has appealed that case to the N.C. Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, two bills aimed at eliminating the Map Act remain tied up in a Senate committee, and a bill letting property owners of condemned land collect interest from NCDOT during the period condemnation proceedings are under way was killed Wednesday in the Senate Transportation Committee.
The two bills stuck in committee are House Bill 183, sponsored by Rep. Rayne Brown, R-Davidson — which passed the House by a vote of 118-0 — and Senate Bill 373, sponsored by Sen. Joyce Krawiec, R-Forsyth.
Krawiec said she has been bending the ear of the committee chairman, Sen. Bill Rabon, R-Brunswick, to get the bills considered, but has not been successful.
Brown’s and Krawiec’s bills are not identical. Brown’s bill addresses laws that reduce tax rates for people with property in the corridor, and Krawiec’s bill does not. Also, Brown’s bill removes some other citations related to filing of maps with proper officials.
The third measure, House Bill 127, by Speaker Pro Tem Paul “Skip” Stam, R-Wake, would have allowed a property owner to add interest to the compensation received by property owners whose land was condemned by NCDOT. The interest would be charged from the date a condemnation proceeding starts until the time the settlement is paid. Rabon’s committee killed that bill.
Krawiec said she’s trying to get Rabon to substitute her bill for Brown’s House bill.
Rabon did not respond to a request for a comment on the bills in his committee.
North Carolina is one of only 13 states with Map Act statutes. Other states with comparable statutes give property owners more options. Some allow landowners to demand immediate acquisition of their property or release from an official map. Others limit the length of time an official corridor map can block building on or subdivision of the land. The limits range from 80 to 356 days.
In North Carolina, the limit is three years.
In March 2014, a John Locke Foundation report by then-legal policy analyst Tyler Younts concluded that the Map Act virtually freezes property development within proposed road corridors by blocking building permit and subdivision applications for three years. The report concludes that the Map Act either should be repealed or the time period for delaying building permits should be shortened from between 80 and 120 days.
Barry Smith (@Barry_Smith) is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.