RALEIGH – Advocates of reforming North Carolina’s extreme annexation laws have long argued that citizens ought to have the right to vote on proposed annexations, as do most other Americans.
So when state lawmakers inserted a referendum provision into House Bill 524, the 2009 annexation legislation, they evidently expected that reformers would praise their decision. Instead, reform groups such as FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity-NC, the Fair Annexation Coalition, and the Stop NC Annexation Coalition have responded to the provision with skepticism if not outright scorn. Now, with the NC League of Municipalities hollering about the presence of any referendum provision and reformers cool to the sham referendum in the bill, there seems to be legislative support for simply excising it.
That would be unfortunate. The rest of the bill is pretty thin gruel, anyway. The proposed oversight of forced annexations by the Local Government Commission is unlikely to work well, as JLF’s Daren Bakst argued in a research paper published earlier this year. Nor are provisions designed to ensure that municipalities do, in fact, deliver meaningful governmental services as North Carolina law requires.
As for the referendum provision, Bakst explained in a recent blog post why it is essentially a sham. The threshold for signatures to approve the referendum is way too high, the time period for obtaining the signatures is way too short, and the referendum would include not just the affected residents but also the current residents of the municipality, a far larger group that will always have the power to determine the outcome of the referendum.
Although they’re making dutiful noises about the presence of a referendum in the annexation bill, municipal officials have carefully guided the legislative process to a point from which they can’t go wrong. Either HB 524 passes in its current form, which they expect to defuse the political pressure for reform without putting any real brakes on forced annexation, or the bill fails, leaving the status quo in place. Either way, the municipal lobby wins.
The truth is that, despite years of vociferous protests and months of legislative activity, true annexation reform does not yet enjoy a legislative majority. In most states in the country, forced annexation is either impossible or is regulated in two key ways: by county governments or by a majority vote of affected residents. North Carolina is the odd man out. We aren’t noticeably healthier, happier, or more fiscally sound because of this oddity. Our extreme position on annexation gains us nothing, and costs millions of North Carolinians both money and freedom.
True reform would mean adopting as least one of these sensible, mainstream checks on annexation abuse – either oversight by counties or a referendum of voters living in the affected neighborhoods. The current bill does neither.
Is this a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good? No. In its current form, the 2009 annexation bill is a missed opportunity, little more than a way to provide political cover to nervous incumbents. There’s still time to save the situation, via amendment. But not much.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation