Welcome
North Carolina has four statutory methods of municipal annexation. They are:
- Voluntary annexation of contiguous areas (G.S. 160A-31 and -31.1).
- Voluntary annexation of noncontiguous areas (G.S. 160A-58 through -58.8).
- Involuntary annexation by cities of less than 5,000 (G.S. 160A-33 through -42).
- Involuntary annexation by cities of 5,000 and more (G.S. 160A-45 through -54).
In addition, the General Assembly retains the power to annex territory to a city. (Only the General Assembly has authority to deannex, or remove, property from a city.)
The two voluntary annexation procedures are relatively noncontroversial, as opposed to the two involuntary annexation procedures, which indeed are quite controversial. It is the purpose of this website to provide information on how the various annexation procedures work, on the historical development of annexation legislation in North Carolina, on the policy arguments in favor of and in opposition to the involuntary annexation procedures, and on current annexation legislation before the North Carolina General Assembly. There is also a link to a short report that compares annexation procedures nationally.
The site includes these features, each of which can be reached through the menu on the left side of this page.
- School of Government publications explaining or discussing North Carolina’s annexation statutes.
- A set of links to the North Carolina statutes authorizing and regulating annexation.
- A short history of the development of annexation legislation in North Carolina, together with important documents from that history.
- A set of documents and links that collectively set out the arguments for and against the current involuntary annexation statutes.
- A summary of the bills currently before the General Assembly that propose statewide amendments to the annexation statutes, together with links to the bills themselves.
- A link to an article summarizing a national study of annexation legislation conducted during the 1990s by researchers at the Indiana University Center for Urban Policy and the Environment.
