As Becki posted, the Rand bill (SB 472) was moved to Senate Finance.  This doesn’t come as a surprise since Senator Shaw, who was supposed to introduce a discharge petition for SB 494 (the only real annexation reform bill), unfortunately decided against the move today after learning that the Senate Finance Committee would form a subcommittee to consider “all” the annexation bills.

A discharge petition is a legislative rule that helps to avoid the oligarchy in the Senate by getting two-thirds of the Senators to agree to bring a bill out of committee for a vote.

SB 472 is the League’s bill.  The League played this situation beautifully.  I tip my hat to them for taking what was a problematic situation for them and turning it into a benefit by letting a “favorable” subcommittee come up with the annexation reform.  They now can push their own bill or Clodfelter’s bill (SB 711) and crush SB 494.

Clodfelter’s bill is just as bad as the Rand/League bill.  His bill wouldn’t require many municipalities to provide water and sewer service!  It gets better folks.  Guess who’s the chair of the new subcommittee?  You guessed it.  Senator Clodfelter! 

Guess who is one of the two token Republicans on the subcommittee?  Hint: He was a sponsor of Clodfelter’s bill: Senator Fletcher Hartsell. 

Before I provide the list of subcommittee members, let me restate why SB 494 is the only real annexation reform bill.  There are three critical requirements for annexation reform:

1) Meaningful Services: Under existing law, a city can annex people even if the area doesn’t need critical services.  Right now, a city doesn’t have to provide critical services to annexed areas that do need the services.  The reason why the law even exists is to provide meaningful services, yet that is being ignored.

2) County Oversight (before passage of an ordinance): A city could literally annex an area even though it would hurt the city, the surrounding community, and the entire county.  There’s no oversight on municipalities–they can do whatever they want.

3) A vote: Annexation victims should be able to vote.

The Clodfelter/Hartsell “no water” annexation bill and the Rand/League bill don’t address any of the three primary reforms.  These bills would hurt annexation victims, not help them.

The difference between the bills is like having three tax bills to help relieve the burden on taxpayers:  Two bills increase taxes and the other tax bill cuts taxes.  Then you have a subcommittee work on a bill that increases taxes and call it a tax bill to help taxpayers.  This is what is happening.

Here are the subcommittee members (5 Ds and 2 Rs–probably 6-1 against real annexation reform, but we’ll see though, maybe they will surprise, it could be 7-0):

Chair of the Committee: Clodfelter

Regular Members of the Committee: Fletcher Hartsell, Floyd McKissick, William Purcell, Larry Shaw, Josh Stein, and Richard Stevens.