There’s a major continuing controversy in Fayetteville that has implications far beyond the borders of Cumberland County. They extend to the operation of city governments across North Carolina — and even to the state’s 2004 gubernatorial contest.
The issue is forced annexation. Fayetteville officials want the city to swallow some 42,000 new people and add their property to the tax rolls.
Oh, and they generously want to provide valuable services to these desperately needy folks. I always forget about that part.
Though I can’t go into a great deal of detail about them, the legal proceedings in the Fayetteville annexation dispute are twisty and fascinating. A homebuilders’ organization, a grassroots activist group, and a soldier at Ft. Bragg filed sued to challenge the annexation, which would be one of the largest single actions of its kind in state history. But these plaintiffs began their challenge after the appeals period ended for the original annexation and thus did not have standing to continue, or so ruled a local trial court.
Not so fast, said the plaintiffs, who noted that the settlement of a previous challenge had essentially restarted the appeals clock. The state court of appeals took a brief look at the plaintiffs’ arguments and issued a stay in the annexation. Then the court took a closer look and lifted the stay after Fayetteville officials promised to begin delivering services quickly to the annexed areas — which invites the question of whether, absent a legal fight, these services would have materialized for the foreseeable future. The answer is probably not, and it helps to explain why forced annexation often leaves such a bitter taste in taxpayers’ mouths.
Then it was the North Carolina Supreme Court’s turn to intervene. It surprisingly reimposed a stay on the entire annexation, pending a full review by the court of appeals. This week, Fayetteville attorneys attempted to get the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision to halt the annexation. On Thursday, the high court rebuffed them.
Got all that? Don’t worry. The key point here is that the state’s judiciary is beginning to conduct a long-overdue examination of North Carolina’s forced-annexation laws, which give municipalities power far outside the mainstream of American local government and far outside the proper bounds of governmental authority in a free society. Municipal officials defend the policy with wonky-sounding rhetoric about public finance and scary stories about other state’s boxed-in cities. But it isn’t hard to see the underlying motivation: redistribution of wealth, as suburbs are annexed and taxed to pay for services primarily benefitting others. As Carolina Journal‘s Michael Lowrey recently reported, Chief Justice Beverly Lake wrote in a previous ruling against an Asheville land-grab that “[i]nvoluntary annexation is by its nature a harsh exercise of governmental power affecting private property and so is properly restrained and balanced by legislative policy and mandated standards and procedure.”
The issue may move beyond the judicial branch of government. While campaigning earlier this week in Fayetteville, newly nominated Republican gubernatorial candidate Patrick Ballantine got a question about the case from my old friend Mike Karakash, a local activist. “We need to stop the forced annexation in North Carolina,” Ballantine replied. “This is one of a few states that is doing that.”
Now, with annexation disputes fresh in the minds of many voters from Wilmington to Asheville, it is Gov. Mike Easley’s turn to weigh in.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.