RALEIGH – Members and staffers at the North Carolina League of Municipalities were understandably upset when the General Assembly enacted a major annexation-reform bill during the 2011 legislative session. But their latest legal gambit to overturn the legislation is not likely to work to their advantage.
For decades, North Carolina municipalities possessed a virtually unlimited power to annex residents against their will. Defenders of the law argued that the state’s forced-annexation law was good for cities and fair to residents, and should have become the national model. In reality, North Carolina had arguably the most extreme, backward, and abusive annexation law in the nation, and no other state felt compelled to emulate it against the will and interests of their citizens.
In most of the United States, it has long been impossible to force people into the jurisdiction of a municipality without some kind of oversight, either by state commissions, counties, or a vote of the people affected. Virtually all states also had stronger, enforceable requirements that municipalities actually provide meaningful services to annexed areas.
According to defenders of North Carolina’s extreme annexation law, these states should have been plagued by higher taxes, municipal bankruptcies, and widespread disaffection among city residents. Hasn’t work that way, of course. Of the 11 states with at least four cities maintaining the highest possible bond rating, only North Carolina permitted forced annexation. The truth is, our annexation law was primarily a political tool for raising revenue for cities without having to raise property taxes on existing city residents.
So you can understand why city leaders were loath to give up this power. They delayed the inevitable as long as they could, but when Republicans secured majorities in both houses of the General Assembly in 2010 with the assistance of annexation-reform activists at the grassroots, the handwriting was on the wall.
The urban lobby hasn’t given up, however. Frustrated by the actions of the legislative branch, it first attempted to involve the executive branch – the federal Department of Justice. Cities argued that the petition process created by the new law was actually an election, the particulars of which would need to be precleared by the Justice Department under the Voting Rights Act.
Advocates of annexation reform, including the John Locke Foundation’s Daren Bakst, challenged the odd notion that petitions are the same thing as elections. As Bakst argued in a letter to the Justice Department:
The protest petition process isn’t a vote, because only those who oppose the annexation sign the petition – there’s no choice made by affected property owners either to favor or oppose the annexation. The annexation is simply presumed to take place unless enough people oppose it.
Furthermore, the cities’ argument proved too much, in a sense. If the veto-petition process had been deemed an election subject to Voting Rights Act oversight, other petition processes would have been subject to the same oversight – including voluntary annexations.
The Justice Department didn’t bite. So now the cities are trying out the same argument in the North Carolina courts, arguing that the petition process is an election that does not comply with the state constitution’s provisions about voting.
I doubt the cities will succeed. I suspect they simply will use additional taxpayer resources in a futile attempt to challenge the actions of the General Assembly. If I’m wrong, however, I still don’t think the story will end in a way the urban lobby will like.
The most likely response of legislative leaders to successful litigation will be to amend the law to require a real vote for any city-initiated annexation – a referendum among the affected county residents. In the past, the League of Municipalities has opposed this idea vociferously. Now, its members have chosen a legal strategy that, even if successful, will result in a policy they have steadfastly opposed in the past.
Look before you leap, ladies and gentlemen.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.