For decades, the North Carolina League of Municipalities (NCLM) and
its allies, such as the UNC School of Government, have spread a huge
lie about NC’s annexation statute that they repeat over and over that
has been the basis for them calling NC’s annexation statute the model
law for the rest of the country.  The following, in my opinion, is
shocking:

The History of the Lie

In 1980, a joint study committee report
of the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners and NCLM
stated “We found that North Carolina’s chief annexation statute [forced
annexation provisions]…has been cited by [ACIR] as a model for the
nation.”

On one of the web pages
of the UNC School of Government web site, it lists sources in favor of
forced annexation.  Here is one of those sources exactly as it is
listed on their site:

“The recommendation of the federal Advisory
Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) to states to adopt an
annexation statute based on the North Carolina statutes.  This
recommendation is from the 1975 set of recommendations, which is the
last year the ACIR made such recommendations.”

At the first meeting of the Joint Legislative Study Commission on
Municipal Annexation, Professor David Lawrence stated (I cleaned it up):

“What I would point to is, as a model law, there used to be an
entity called the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, a
federal agency that looked at the relationship between federal, state
and local government and did in fact put out model statutes and
recommendations for states to legislate on and it had its entry for
annexation and its model legislation series was the North Carolina
statutes.  So you have a Federal agency back in the seventies,
which was the last time it was really operating, they thought North
Carolina’s statute was a model.  So you have that.”

You can see the clip where he says this right here.

The Truth

The 1975 ACIR report
(PDF–long download) actually favored boundary commissions and
recommended those options to address annexation.  Only if the
states didn’t adopt this approach should they adopt a North Carolina
forced annexation type of model.  Here’s exactly what it said (see
page 16):

“States should adopt one of the two principal approaches for exercising
surveillance over local government boundary adjustments.  The
first approach — state review of local actions — has been adopted by
Minnesota, which has established a three member state commission…The
second approach has been adopted by California and involves the
establishment of local agency formation commissions (usually consisting
of two county officials, two city officials, and one member
representing the general public.”

Just below this passage, the ACIR explains that if these options are not adopted, then
states should look to the NC model.  As can be seen in the above
passage though, the ACIR believes there really are only two ways to
go–a state boundary commission or a local boundary commission. 

It is worth noting that the UNC School of Government omitted pages from
the 1975 ACIR report that includes model legislation setting up
boundary commissions and instead only includes the
NC-related legislation.

The ACIR report’s real recommendations are completely different from
what is listed on the UNC School of Government’s web site and from what
Professor Lawrence said at the meeting.  They are giving the clear
impression that the ACIR report only recommended NC’s statute. 

They fail to not only mention the other recommendations, but also to mention that the other recommendations were favored by the ACIR.

In 1977, the ACIR actually further pushed for a local boundary
commission (and this appears to be its lone recommendation related to
annexation) in a report called Regionalism Revisited: Recent Areawide and Local Responses (see page 44 of the PDF, page 36 of the document itself).

Professor Lawrence did recently admit to me that the ACIR did favor
boundary commissions first.  Hopefully, this lie will end now
since the truth has been discovered.

The only model the NC annexation statute has ever been is a model of abuse.