Make no mistake, Rep. Blue is trying to kill the annexation moratorium bill. Some background:
This
morning, as Becki described, the Judiciary II committee discussed the
forced annexation moratorium bill. Many forced annexation
opponents from across the state were in the audience–the room was
packed.
Instead of taking up the bill right away, out of respect and
courtesy to people that had traveled from all over the state, Rep. Blue
pushed the bill to the end. Conveniently, the bill will be voted
on later (maybe) when many people will likely not be around.
Rep. Blue asked the opponents of forced annexation to identify
an instance where any of the biggest NC cities, Raleigh, Charlotte, and
Greensboro had violated the annexation law. His goal was to
exempt these three cities from any moratorium.
1) Misses the Point
I tried to argue, as did others, that
he was missing the point. The problem isn’t that cities violate
the annexation law. They don’t need to violate the law because
they can abuse annexation legally. The purpose of the moratorium
is to take the time to fix the law, not to figure out who is abusing
the law.
Blue suggested that support for the moratorium was
driven by emotion and that it was based on opposition to forced
annexation. I tried to point out that someone could support
forced annexation and still believe that there needed to be a
moratorium because the process basically allows municipalities to do
whatever they want.
My recent Spotlight
explains in simple terms some myths about the annexation process and
why the law is a sham. Cities can and do abuse forced
annexation even when complying with the law.
2) Why Big Cities?
Rep.
Blue was trying to make a weak case that somehow big cities have
complied with the annexation law but other smaller and medium-sized
cities didn’t. He had no evidence of this. At least one
legislator called him out on this–he had no response.
Cary’s past abuses were highlighted, but Blue would not stand to listen about any other city except the three.
To Rep. Blue, Fayetteville’s big bang annexation in which
thousands of people won’t receive water and sewer for 15-20 years
apparently wouldn’t be worthy of discussion.
The Village of
Marvin trying to annex people and simply provide administrative
services only, such as tax collection and zoning apparently isn’t
worthy of discussion (btw: the NC Supreme court did say that this
violated the law).
When Goldsboro annexed an area and a city council member argued that it was to prevent white flight–this isn’t the type of annexation abuse that he apparently wanted to hear about.
By
his logic, the moratorium shouldn’t apply to any city in which there is
no proof (today) that the city violated the annexation law at some
point. He can’t even be consistent with his own ridiculous
argument–he only cares about the big three cities.
I also should
point out that a moratorium is not designed to punish naughty cities,
but to take time to review a state-wide process that is so unfair that
not one more North Carolinian should be victimized by such a
disgraceful and embarassing law.
III. Practical
My
opinion only: Since I don’t want to write a book, let me get to the
practical issues. Rep. Blue knows full well exactly what the
issues are–this push for protection for the big cities is a poison
pill. It is highly unlikely that an amendment of such kind to
exempt these cities could get passed out of the committee. If it
does get passed, there is no way that legislators could support a
moratorium bill that exempted three cities. As one legislator
mentioned: How could he explain such exemptions to city leaders in his
district that didn’t get exempted.
Rep. Blue is trying to use the
big city exemption as a poor way to hide his opposition to the
moratorium and to kill the bill. He may succeed, and once again a
powerful NC legislator would have cared more about municipalities than
citizens.