The fight may not be over, but legislators from both parties
made it far more difficult by creating a joint House-Senate commission
to study annexation issues as opposed to letting the House committee
simply finish its work this year.  The commission was created in
“The Studies Act of 2008.”

The creation of the joint commission likely effectively killed what was
a somewhat fair committee in the House–a committee whose leaders
promised to meet and finish its work.

Now, with about three months to go before the end of the year, plus
elections and holidays, a joint committee, which has not been formed
yet, has to learn the issue (something the House committee wouldn’t
have had to do) and actually develop recommendations before the end of
2008.

More importantly, the appointments are unlikely to be very favorable to
annexation reform proponents (it almost certainly will be far worse
than the House committee).   If the Senate is unwilling to
even permit the moratorium bill to be heard, it is unlikely that it
will permit a committee to develop recommendations that call for
meaningful reform.  This is the same Senate that could have been
part of a joint committee this past year but killed the idea in
2007–this is why the House formed its own committee.

There is a very good chance the appointments never even will be made,
and as a result of “creating” the possibility of this joint
commission,  the legislature killed any chance that a real report
with meaningful recommendations will be developed.

My initial impression in July about this joint commission, which I wrote about here, seems to be dead-on.  I hope my reality-based analysis regarding the creation of the joint commission doesn’t come true:

“This is a disaster for annexation reform.

League wins again and is running up the score!”