Editorial: In Turn – Senate leader shouldn’t mug justice (Fayetteville Observer)

We have little sympathy for two appeals, by Fayetteville and five other cities, of the legislature’s recent curbs on involuntary annexation. Fayetteville’s was especially ill-advised. But the real travesty now is Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger’s threat against the litigants.

Unless the cities drop their appeals, Berger warned in a letter to the six mayors and the N.C. League of Municipalities, the legislature will do to the annexations still pending what it did to others earlier in the year: prohibit them through special legislation.

There is no doubt that the lawmakers have authority to do that. Municipalities are creatures of the legislature. No other body can create or abolish one. The annexation statute itself is an act of the General Assembly. But things changed when the issue moved into the judicial realm.

If Berger succeeds, the legislature will have made itself part of an ugly misuse of legislative power to intimidate plaintiffs into abandoning actions already filed.

About that litigation: Berger says in his threatening letter that he’s only trying to ensure that “taxpayer money is not wasted on frivolous and abusive legal maneuvers.” But if the appeals really were frivolous, two things would be true.

First, they wouldn’t be before the courts, which do not try frivolous cases and which sanction those who initiate them, often by assessing costs against the plaintiffs.

Second, Sen. Berger wouldn’t be afraid of the outcome. In fact, he’d look forward to having his work ratified at the appellate level.

The only thing that’s abusive about this is the senator’s bullying. Furthermore, he’s distorting the proper perspective on North Carolina’s annexation law.

Yes, the legislature can create and do away with cities. But there’s no provision for flash-freezing one by routinely impeding its annexations for spite or for votes.

The whole context of the law is orderly urban growth through annexation. Expansion is the marrow in its bones. (Even abolition has been carried out only at the request of the municipalities that were ultimately abolished.)

As we’ve said from the outset, the logical follow-up to the statute’s revision would have been for the self-described reformers to identify the tools they want cities to use in continuing the work the statute mandates.

Trying to frustrate an attempt to test the constitutionality of the revision is politically petty and contrary to good governance. The appeals are awaiting disposition in a branch of government equal to Berger’s, and should be heard on whatever merits they possess.

After that, it’s his show.
Published: 12:02 AM, Mon Dec 26, 2011

Fayetteville Observer

2012-01-03T10:46:55+00:00January 3rd, 2012|
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