The House Judiciary II Committee just shot down amendment after amendment and have passed a annexation bill that hurts annexation reform and helps municipalities (I believe all the meaningful amendments were shot down on party lines–R’s favored annexation reform, the D’s didn’t). 

The D’s even went further and made sure nobody else in the House will be able to amend the bill!

If you think annexation is just about whether there is a vote, you’d be wrong (the Committee of course rejected a vote as well).

The committee, headed by Rep. Glazier who individually rejected all the amendments that provided any reform,  apparently believes:

1) Municipalities should be allowed to annex areas even if the area doesn’t need services.

2) There’s no need for real oversight.

3) Municipalities shouldn’t pay for the costs of water and sewer infrastructure–the annexation victims that don’t want the services should pay for it.

4) Best of all: Nobody else in the House should be able to amend the bill!  

The committee (or I should say the D’s) rejected an amendment that had the audacity to allow legislators outside the committee to amend the bill (I don’t want to get into the details of the House rules).

That’s right–the J-2 Committee rejected an amendment that would have ensured that the rest of the legislators (the rest of the House) could try and amend the bill (there may be some way that amendments could be possible, but my understanding is that it is highly unlikely).

Rep. Jones when arguing against the amendment that would have allowed other House members to have a say on annexation reform explained that it wasn’t necessary because “democracy is already chaotic enough.”  I agree, who needs democracy anyway–it is such a pain when you can have an oligarchy like we do in NC!

I had heard before the meeting that the League was bragging that they already had killed any annexation reform.  I guess they were telling the truth.

This is just more evidence that North Carolina can proudly call itself the state that is “First in Corruption.”

I genuninely am really sad for the 4.1 million North Carolinians that live in unincorporated areas and are now or will be victims of forced annexation.  The House J-2 Committee and the House leadership showed today that the League not only is more important to them than the citizens, but the citizens don’t even deserve the scraps from the tables where the back-door deals go down.