History of Annexation Legislation in North Carolina

It may be necessary to enlarge some of these articles in order to read them clearly.

The Development of North Carolina’s Annexation Legislation

The 1947 legislation

North Carolina’s first annexation legislation was enacted in 1947. The statute permitted a city to unilaterally initiate an annexation, limited only by the requirement that the annexation area be contiguous to the city. There was no requirement of voter approval unless the voters residing in the annexation area presented the city with a petition signed by at least 15 percent of the area’s qualified voters. The legislation also included a brief procedure for voluntary annexation of contiguous property.

The 1947 General Assembly hoped that the new annexation law would significantly diminish the legislature’s involvement in municipal annexation, but in that regard the statute failed. Although succeeding years saw a slight reduction in the number of special annexation acts sought and enacted, the General Assembly continued to spend considerable time and energy on specific annexation proposals. Finally in 1957, after a session that witnessed bruising fights over annexation proposals from Charlotte and Greensboro, the General Assembly established a special commission, the Municipal Government Study Commission, and directed it to come up with a new approach to annexation.

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The 1959 legislation

The Municipal Government Study Commission was assisted by staff members from the Institute of Government, particularly, on annexation issues, by George Esser. Esser prepared two long staff papers for the Commission that were obviously influential in its decisions. Near the end of 1958 the Commission prepared an initial report that focused mainly on its responsibilities other than annexation, and then in January 1959 issued a supplemental report that set out its more detailed thinking about annexation. The 1959 annexation legislation, which remains the core of the current involuntary annexation statutes, is clearly based on the principles in the supplemental report. (The Commission also sponsored separate legislation that led to the current voluntary annexation procedure for contiguous property.)

Esser’s review of city-related legislation for the 1959 session contains a more specific summary of the 1959 legislation as enacted; given his position as staff to the Study Commission, it also reflects the Commission’s understanding of the legislation.

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Studies during the 1980s

There were two formal studies of the annexation law during the 1980s. The first was a joint effort by the state League of Municipalities and state Association of County Commissioners, during the first months of 1980. The joint committee made three recommendations for change, two quite minor, and a third which would have set up a process under which cities could be forced to annex adjacent areas that had become urban and were in need of city services. The minor changes made their way into the report of the second 1980s study and from there into law, but nothing has come of the proposal for mandated annexation.

The second study was done in 1982 by a committee of the Legislative Research Commission (LRC), which submitted its report to the 1983 General Assembly. That report recommended a number of minor procedural amendments to the statute (including the two included in the report from the joint committee of the League and Association) and the following major recommendations:

Several counties had been excluded from the involuntary annexation statutes, and those exclusions should be repealed.
Cities should be required to enter into service contracts with volunteer fire departments affected by an annexation, to pay a portion of volunteer fire department debt when the department was affected by an annexation, and to offer a job to any full-time employee of a volunteer fire department whose job was lost because of an annexation.
The resolution of consideration should be added to the annexation procedure.
Property owners within an annexation area for a city of 5,000 or more should have the right to demand extension of utility lines to their property within two years after the effective date of annexation, as long as the extensions were made pursuant to the city’s existing extension policies.

By and large the 1983 General Assembly enacted the LRC’s recommendations into law.

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Studies during the 1990s

There were four studies during the 1990s, one by a joint committee of the League of Municipalities and the Association of County Commissioners and the other three by committees of the LRC.

The Joint City/County Annexation Committee, which reported in December 1996, made 20 different recommendations for amendments to the annexation statutes, both voluntary and involuntary. None of the recommendations were immediately enacted into law, but a few were eventually included in the report of the third of the LRC committees and in that way became law.

The 1995 General Assembly authorized the LRC to study annexation, and the Commission established a committee to study a variety of property-related issues including involuntary annexation. The committee recommended a number of amendments that would have generally made annexation more difficult and more expensive for cities, but the 1996 General Assembly did not enact any of its recommendations into law. It did, however, authorize another annexation study by the LRC, which then reported to the 1997 General Assembly. It too would have made annexations considerably more difficult and expensive, and once again the General Assembly refused to enact the recommendations into law.

After experiencing a bruising fight over the 1997 recommendations, the 1997 General Assembly asked the LRC to try one more time, this time resulting in a report to the 1998 session of the General Assembly. This third time, though, the General Assembly was more receptive, and most of the recommendations of this third LRC study in three years were enacted into law. The most important changes recommended in the 1998 report were:

Special provisions were added for annexation areas that include properties subject to use-value taxation.
The existing standards for urban development were modified with the intention of making it more difficult for a city to qualify an area for annexation.
A new urban development standard – the nonresidential urban uses test – was added.
Cities were required to follow streets and recorded property lines when drawing the boundaries of annexation areas.
A new step in the annexation process – the public information meeting – was added.
A court reviewing an annexation was now permitted to declare an ordinance void rather than remanding it to the city for modification.

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Satellite Annexation

North Carolina is highly unusual, if not unique, in having a statutory procedure under which cities may annex noncontiguous areas. The first version of the so-called satellite annexation law is found in a local act of the 1967 General Assembly, applicable only to Raleigh. Over the next six years the General Assembly extended this authority to nine other cities, and in 1974 the General Assembly enacted statewide legislation, repealing the existing local acts.

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1967 legislation giving satellite annexation authority to Raleigh.