It appears that the House Judiciary II Committee will finally meet to consider the annexation bill and the proposed amendments to the bill.
The committee was supposed to meet Tuesday, but the meeting was cancelled at the last second. The committee was then supposed to meet yesterday, but again it was cancelled at the last second. The excuse: budget meetings.
Was it a coincidence that by cancelling the meetings, the Committee was able to drive down the number of people that are going to be at the meeting? After all, there’s only so many times people from across the state can drive to Raleigh for a J-2 committee meeting. Also, it helps to provide enough time to do back-door deals (and for the League and the leadership of both parties to “educate” the J-2 Committee members). I’ll leave it to you to decide whether the NC House, a model of ethics, would do anything so unethical.
More troubling is the possibility that amendments that were provided to the committee last week and reviewed by committee leadership and staff may magically be deemed to be out-of-order. One legislator (that we know of) who was pushing a meaningful reform amendment all of a sudden has changed his/her support of the amendment.
We will see in moments whether the members of the J-2 committee are going to continue playing games with North Carolinians that want real annexation reform.
The J-2 Committee would have to reject numerous meaningful amendments (or rule those “problematic” amendments as “out-of-order.”) I have faith they are capable of ignoring their constituents and not even passing modest reforms.
