Emergency Alert from StopNCAnnexation

The following was distributed yesterday by Catherine Heath of StopNCAnnexation:

EMERGENCY ALERT!!

House Bill 524 is on the House Calendar for tomorrow (today, Wednesday, July 8) to be moved forward to passage!!

Listen tomorrow at 3 pm online: http://www.ncleg.net/Audio/Audio.html

Please call your legislator tonight and tomorrow and tell them you oppose this bill and want them to vote against it.

Find contact info for your legislator:

http://www.ncleg.net/GIS/RandR07/Home.html

House Bill 524 is the HOUSE VERSION OF THE RAND/League BILL S472!!

Remember; those are the League approved bills.
524 complements S472.
http://www.nclm.org/Legal-legislative/LegisBulletin061909.htm

Pay no attention to the wailing coming from the League of Municipalities about the vote amendment.

The NCLM is play acting the part they are expected to play.

This Bill is a disaster for real reform and the vote amendment added to it is a cruel joke on us.

The standards for a valid petition to get a vote are close to impossible to meet and, if met, to win against a tax funded municipal campaign by and for the city to win.

What 524 changes in the services requirements will mean higher costs for the victims of forced annexation, not the relief from the financial burdens of forced annexation that we all have asked for.

We need to help the Senate have the freedom to come up with a better bill, and a victory for Rand’s bill would smother that.

Rand is trying to dominate the conversation in the Senate by getting H524 passed out of the House!

He’ll do anything to make that happen, and if the grassroots does not oppose H524, he is succeeding.

That will hobble any chance we have to get a better bill out of the Senate.

And get ready for any vote provision in H524 to disappear once 524 gets to the Senate; _but H524 will NOT disappear.

That is why H524 needs to DIE!

This battle is far from over! The Senate has just begun to work on an annexation reform bill.

Don’t let Tony Rand and the League mess this up!!

If we do not oppose H524, then we will be waiting for many years to come to see real annexation reform. The League approved bills are good for the cities with nothing good for us.

Don’t let those working against us succeed in dividing the grassroots.


Please read the following letter from Ron Thoreson, one of the founders of StopNCAnnexation:

To all who are Grass Roots Annexation Reform believers and workers:

I, Ron Thoreson, am one of the founders of the grassroots effort to change the North Carolina Annexation Laws.

From the beginning, it has always been the true grass roots citizen’s goal to get real annexation reform using a bipartisan approach for reform from our North Carolina Legislative Representatives.

In observing much information from all the recent committee meetings and developments, with different bills and amendments being tossed about, it is critical for all in the current grass roots movement to watch closely for one thing, and that is partisan posturing, deal making and finger pointing.

No one party will make true reform of the North Carolina annexation laws. I am sad to see that some political partisan leaders are now claiming that changes in partisan representation are the only answer to true reform. It is not.

Tell those who are making such claims that they need to work across the aisle, for us, to show others that true reform is defined as being real reform, not some useless legislation that may claim to offer a vote, but stacks all the requirements of getting such vote against the will of the people seeking to have a voice and a vote in the process

Tell your legislators that the only reform is to effectively represent the people they are tasked to serve and give them a real voice and a balanced playing field when it comes to a municipalities desire to annex.

Beware of the partisan and power games that are being played over this subject in the NC Legislature right now. There are power groups on both sides of the aisle that are jockeying to create meaningless legislation that offers no real reform. If left to this outcome, the result will be that annexation laws will not have a chance to be changed again for a minimum of five years.

Ellis Hankins of the North Carolina League of Municipalities argued against annexation reform legislation for years after the bogus 1998 “annexation reform study”, saying that 'such was done and did not need to be done again'. Hankins got his way until this year, 2009…..11 years.

Grassroots workers; don’t be duped into living with a bill that is meaningless! And don’t be duped into an excuse that one partisan group is to blame over the other.

Keep up the fight! Demand nothing less than true reform!

Ron Thoreson,
Co-Founder, StopNCAnnexation