Here’s an example of how residents “exercised their democratic rights to seek an alternative solution through their local governments,” as explained in the Winston-Salem Journal’s recent editorial on municipal broadband:
The cities involved with MI-Connection, for example, took on $92 million in debt to purchase the local cable system out of bankruptcy, even though a private provider was willing to buy and operate the system. Citizens were promised that the system would “pay for itself,” yet the operation has bled money from the start. Today it has fewer customers than when it started, and in 2010 taxpayers had to fork over $6.4 million just to keep the system running.
The result: citizens of Mooresville and Davidson are on the hook for this liability they neither asked for nor got a chance to approve. What happened to the provision of the North Carolina Constitution which says local governments cannot incur debt secured by a pledge of its faith and credit, unless approved by the voters? The cities got around the constitution by promising to raise taxes to repay the debt — not to the lenders, but to the Local Government Commission, which approved the debt.
Ed McMahan concludes it’s the General Assembly’s job to ensure that cities “stick to their knitting.”
