I think many legislators think their constituents are stupid. How else to describe this morning’s House Finance Committee?
Approval of a vote: As I mentioned before, don’t be surprised if a vote (and nothing else that is worth anything) is passed in committee with full knowledge by some legislators that a vote has little to no chance of passage on the floor, or in the Senate, and all that would be left over is a horrible bill. This is what happened this morning.
This doesn’t mean getting a vote approved is bad, but it does mean that if nothing else gets passed (especially modest changes), you can easily see that support for vote is just political cover. As Becki mentioned, there has been talk that this amendment was used for precisely this purpose.
However, it is even worse than I expected. The vote amendment that passed today is an absurd voting system, where it would be extremely difficult to get a vote (15% of people in proposed area and municipality must support a vote) and the the vote is for citizens of both the municipality and the affected area.
To see how legitimate the support for a vote is, all we need to do is see if any of the Democrats (this all of a sudden has become partisan) supported the far more modest amendments. Let me stress, the Republicans haven’t exactly fought for reform, but now they are at least trying to some extent.
The following got shot down, as Becki described here and here:
1) Amendment to Require Municipalities to Pay for Water and Sewer Infrastructure: A city initiates a forced annexation–it therefore should be their responsibility to pay for the water and sewer lines necessary to provide the services annexation victims neither want nor need. This simple change got shot down and annexation victims will have to pay well over $10,000 for something the city should be paying for–these costs may be the biggest single problem with annexation–forcing people, especially those on fixed incomes, to leave their homes.
2) Higher Level of Services: I’m very happy this amendment got shot down! It was horribly drafted and would have helped cities. The amendment demonstrates that legislators from both parties don’t understand the Nolan case or what the issue of meaningful services is about (i.e. cities should only be able to annex if they can provide a service than an area needs–of at a minimum, provide a service that is significantly better than what annexation victims currently have).
3) Allow Amendments on the Floor: The Democrats (yes, they deserve all the blame for this one) are trying to keep anyone from amending the bill once the bill gets on the floor. An amendment was introduced that would have allowed representative democracy to work by allowing all House members to have a say on annexation. What a novel concept! Along party lines (D’s against the amendment, R’s for the amendment, except for Faison who is a D), the amendment failed.
The failure to pass this amendment that would have allowed the full House to have a say on the bill is utterly despicable. Some legislators that make a big deal out of the need for government reform, open government, ethics (all of which is needed) voted to make sure that the full House doesn’t have any say–so much for their support of ethics, etc. Opposition to this amendment was indefensible.
Wait until the videos come out regarding the discussion of this amendment–if you hadn’t lost faith in the NC legislature before, the video clips will do the trick.
Later today, the Finance Committee is supposed to consider some additional modest amendments, which of course they will shoot down.
