What if you wake up one day and find out you can no longer vote for your city council members?  Further, the city council members could still make the same major decisions that affect your lives, such as how much in taxes you should pay and what zoning laws you must follow.

This would seem like a far-fetched scenario, yet in North Carolina we have 4.1 million fellow citizens that live in unincorporated areas that are at risk of facing a comparable situation.

They could wake up and find that a city that they never decided to live in is going to force them to live in the city.  This means a government they never consented to be governed by is going to devastate their lives.  It means they’ll face higher taxes, laws and regulations that could fundamentally alter their way of life, and excessive water and sewer infrastructure costs.

This outdated and embarrassing practice of government abuse is called forced annexation.  North Carolina is one of only a handful of states considered a forced annexation state, and its law is arguably the most extreme in the country.

Last year, the state House passed an annexation “reform” bill, HB 524, that some legislators are tying to pass off as a first step towards reforming North Carolina’s 51 year-old annexation law.  However, the bill is a merely a first step towards making annexation abuse even worse.

It’s important to identify what constitutes meaningful reform.  The most important reform is to provide annexed property owners a voice so that they can have some say in whether they are going to be forcibly annexed.

This voice could be a vote of the affected property owners.  Another way to provide a voice, albeit less desirable, is to have county approval of city-initiated annexations.  The county commissioners can at least provide a representative voice for the property owners.

Annexation victims often correctly point out that the municipalities annexing them aren’t providing them a single service that they need.  Municipalities will duplicate existing services or contract with the county for one extra police officer for an area that has excellent police protection.

In 2006, the North Carolina Supreme Court in a case called Nolan v. Village of Marvin held that municipalities must provide property owners services that give them a significant or meaningful benefit.  There’s nothing significant or meaningful about duplicating existing services.  As a result, the law should clarify that municipalities may only annex an area if the municipality can provide a necessary service.

While a voice for property owners and necessary services are the core reforms, another major reform should also be addressed.  Even though annexed property owners don’t want or need water and sewer, they are forced to pay for the water and sewer infrastructure.  This is just adding insult to injury.  Not only are property owners forcibly annexed, but they also have to pay for their “noose.”

HB 524 doesn’t address any of these issues.  There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors to give the impression that it’s doing something, but it’s all a sham.  The biggest sham is the so-called vote provision.

In a little over a year, annexation victims would have to secure signatures from 15 percent of the total number of registered voters in the municipality and the annexed area.  Based on just registered voters in municipalities alone, in Raleigh this would mean securing 38,057 signatures—an impossible task.

In a smaller community like Goldsboro, 3,304 signatures would be needed—a very unlikely task.  These numbers don’t take into account the extra signatures needed to make-up for rejected signatures.  

In addition, there’s not much incentive for municipal residents to sign the petition especially when the municipalities (and its allies) will be doing extensive “education” in favor of the annexation.

Here’s the kicker though.  If by some miracle the signatures are gathered and there’s a vote, the municipal residents vote along with the affected property owners.  Since generally there are so many more municipal voters than voters in annexed areas, the only individuals with a voice are the municipal residents.  In other words, instead of the city council deciding that an area will be forcibly annexed, the city residents will decide that an area will be forcibly annexed.   

HB 524 actually hurts annexation reform.  It’s possible that the North Carolina Supreme Court would stop the municipalities from being able to annex areas by providing unnecessary services.

To preempt the Court from taking that action, HB 524 makes it clear that cities can duplicate services and it’s fine to provide unnecessary services.  One of the core reforms was to require municipalities to provide necessary services.  HB 524 does the exact opposite by ignoring annexation reformers and making sure cities can provide absolutely nothing in return for forcing people into their boundaries.

HB 524 proponents often point to the requirement in the bill that municipalities must provide water and sewer within three years, as if this is some meaningful reform.  They fail to mention that under existing law, annexed property owners can request water and sewer and municipalities then are required to provide these services within two years.

They also fail to mention that under existing law, a city may indefinitely postpone providing sewer lines only if it isn’t economically feasible to run the lines due to the topography of the area.  Under HB 524, if a municipality decides that providing sewer lines isn’t fiscally feasible for any reason (not just topography), they can indefinitely postpone providing the lines thereby making the three-year requirement virtually meaningless.

Since the House has passed its annexation bill, the ball is in the Senate’s court.  The Senate should ignore HB 524 and develop real annexation reform.  North Carolina citizens deserve a lot better than the state’s abusive annexation law.

Daren Bakst, an attorney, is the Director of Legal and Regulatory Studies for the John Locke Foundation.