Saffo said the purpose of annexation is to both extend city services to urban areas in the unincorporated parts of the county contiguous to city limits and to recoup costs incurred by the general public using city facilities, such as roads and parks.

Dallas Woodhouse, North Carolina state director for the conservative group Americans for Prosperity, said his organization would urge state lawmakers to pass legislation to stop new annexations from taking effect.

Woodhouse said by fighting the new laws, Wilmington is “absolutely playing with fire here.” He said he believes it’s “disappointing” when local elected officials aren’t willing to accept legislation debated and approved by state lawmakers.

“The bottom line is the legislature has the final say on municipal boundaries, and (the cities) need to remember that, in my opinion,” Woodhouse said.

The state Attorney General’s Office is reviewing the judge’s ruling, spokeswoman Noelle Talley wrote in an email.

“We’re not going to comment at this point since the ruling could be appealed,” she wrote.

By Patrick Gannon
Staff writer Shelby Sebens contributed to this report.
(StarNewsOnline.com)
Mar 27, 2012

The state could put the brakes on job recruitment in eastern North Carolina if it puts tolls on Interstate 95, business leaders from counties bordering the highway say.

“It would put us at a competitive disadvantage,” said Allen Purser, president of the Roanoke Valley Chamber of Commerce in Halifax County. New and existing companies would have to factor in tolls for delivery trucks and workers when comparing the cost of operating in eastern North Carolina verses other areas of the state or country, he said.

“I’ve got companies sitting here now saying, ‘If this comes, we’re just going to move,’” Purser said.

The 182-mile stretch of I-95 in North Carolina was built starting in the 1950s and continuing into the early 1980s. Most business and government leaders agree the mainly four-lane highway is in need of widening, updated interchanges and other improvements.

Where people differ is how to pay for the work.

The state has gotten permission from the federal government to study the placement of tolls on an existing highway. That’s unusual because states are typically only allowed to put tolls on newly constructed roads, not highways that have been around for decades.

Initial plans call for nine automated toll areas at roughly 20-mile intervals, but traffic engineers say that could change depending on the outcome of environmental, economic and other studies. The earliest the new system could could into effect would be 2019, according to plans published by the N.C. DOT.
While tolls would raise revenue without tapping the cash-strapped state treasury, business leaders warn there would be other costs.

“Any time your expenses increase, you’ve got to either eat the cost or pass it along to your customers,” said Lige Daughtridge, CEO of Daughtridge Sales Company in Rocky Mount and chairman of the Rocky Mount Area Chamber of Commerce.

Edgecombe, Halifax, Northampton and Nash counties all have unemployment rates above the state average of 10.5 percent.

Many of the jobs those counties do have are at distribution centers for well-known companies like Food Lion, QVC, Lowe’s and Walmart as well as other lesser known but no less important suppliers to restaurants and large retail chains. The “Trade, Transportation and Utilities” sector of the state economy that includes trucking firms and distribution centers created 2,681 jobs in 2009, the latest year for which the N.C. Commerce Department has published data.

Daughtridge’s company, for example, distributes industrial pressure gauges, thermometers and related equipment. It would see costs increase both from suppliers and when shipping items to customers, Daughtridge said.

Those cost increases drove 77 percent of the business leaders who responded to a Rocky Mount chamber survey to oppose tolling I-95. Only 22 percent backed the idea, Daughtridge said. The chamber hasn’t taken a position on the project.

Negative impact of tolls blunted by benefits

While many see tolling as an economic drag, Daughtridge acknowledges that tolling could help fund a project that would boost Rocky Mount’s economy. The extra money would allow transportation planners to move forward with a new interchange in Rocky Mount that Daughtridge says is needed open up land for new development.

Without extra funding, Daughtridge said, that new interchange would have to wait 60 years.

“It’s a separate issue. But it’s a fact you’ve got to have money to build the interchange,” he said.

Balancing competing concerns would be the aim of an economic impact study that NCDOT hopes to begin sometime this summer, said Kristine O’Connor, a project planning engineer with the agency.

“We will be taking into account what the public’s concerns are,” O’Connor said. “It’s not just going to be DOT in a vacuum making a decision. It’s going to be a study that involves lots of different stakeholders.”

One consultant who helps businesses find new locations for factories and negotiate incentives say he would be surprised if that study showed businesses would be deterred by tolls.

“My gut instinct is that for a sizable project, tolling isn’t going to make a big economic impact,” said Mark Williams, president of Strategic Development Group in Columbia, S.C. “Further, if you don’t have good roads, that may be more of an issue.”

Williams acknowledged that costs from tolling would be factored into a project’s bottom line. However, he said his clients would be much more concerned if they thought a rickety bridge or traffic-clogged artery would make transportation to and from their location difficult.

Exact costs from tolling are hard to come by. However, with estimated tolls for a tractor-trailer to cross the state at roughly $60, companies that rely on big dozens of big trucks per day to ship and receive goods could be looking at substantially higher costs.

“Certainly, as a company, we are following the debate,” said Karen Cobb, a spokeswoman for the Lowe’s home improvement chain. The company has more than 600 employees at its Garysburg distribution center in Northampton County, she said, and it is concerned about their ability to get to and from work.

Cobb would not say how many trucks come in and out of the facility. But she did say the tolls under discussion could increase costs by millions of dollars, money that would eventually be passed on to consumers.

Legislation would take tolls off the table

Some state and federal lawmakers do not want leaders at companies like Lowe’s to think any further about the tolls. U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers, a Dunn Republican, has submitted a bill that would prohibit federal regulators from approving North Carolina’s toll project.

In the state General Assembly, Rep. Michael Wray, a Gaston Democrat, said he is drafting a bill that would stop NCDOT from moving forward with the project. He says the area’s ability to attract new businesses is a key part of his concern.

“We’ve got some projects in eastern North Carolina that are looking at North Carolina hard, and they’re watching this,” Wray said.

Like many toll opponents, Wray questions why the state’s gas tax can’t support the work needed on I-95. And he questioned why other state highways like I-40 and I-85 aren’t being considered for tolls.

“I think we need to look at other alternatives,” Wray said.

Although Wray, a Democrat, might usually have trouble moving legislation through the Republican-controlled House, his stance could have powerful allies.

A spokesman for House Speaker Thom Tillis said the chamber’s top Republican opposes the idea of putting tolls on existing roads, including I-95.

“He is open to potential tolling projects on new roads, but not existing roads,” said Tillis spokesman Jordan Shaw.

Gov. Bev Perdue, a Democrat, has not taken a stand on the project, saying she is waiting until the economic impact analysis and other studies are completed.

“Tolling is not always the best option – and it should never be implemented without first researching the impact on our citizens, our businesses and the land we live upon,” said Perdue spokeswoman Chris Mackey.

(WRAL)
Posted: 2:50 p.m. 3/27/12
Updated: 4:15 p.m. 3/27/12

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina judge on Tuesday struck down the state’s new method for giving citizens of unincorporated areas the opportunity to block forced annexations by towns and cities. The ruling potentially strips away a key element of laws that property rights activists sought for years.

Judge Shannon Joseph issued a written order Tuesday throwing out the petition process authorized last year by the General Assembly. The measure halted a municipality’s effort to expand its borders if enough property owners in the targeted area said no. The case is likely to be settled in the appellate courts.

The Republican-led Legislature passed laws last June that overhauled the state’s involuntary annexation rules, which have guided municipal growth in the state for more than 50 years. While many property owners in unincorporated areas have long chafed at being absorbed by cities and having to pay higher taxes, city leaders have said the previous laws had served the state well by helping cities such as Charlotte grow at a manageable rate.

Several municipalities with pending annexations sued late last year, arguing that the new method was unenforceable because it only gave landowners, not all voters within the area that could be acquired, the right to decide. Joseph agreed, after two hours of arguments Monday in Wake County Superior Court. The judge ruled that two local laws and portions of a statewide involuntary annexation law enacted in 2011 were unconstitutional and void.

The laws said proposed involuntary annexations by cities would be terminated if 60 percent of the landowners in the targeted areas signed a petition within a roughly four-month period opposing it. The town or city would be barred from trying again for three years.

Property owners surrounding Lexington, Kinston, Fayetteville and others already have used the process to halt pending annexations. The petitions involving those involuntary annexations and a handful of other pending cases now have no effect, Joseph wrote, meaning the annexations could potentially resume if her ruling isn’t overturned.

Anthony Fox, a Charlotte lawyer representing three municipalities in the case, said his clients were pleased with the ruling. Supporters of North Carolina’s cities and towns have said the handful of communities whose pending involuntary annexations were seemingly overturned by the 2011 laws shouldn’t be penalized for following the previous rules.

“The annexations had gone through all the necessary challenges in the courts,” he said. “They would have been effective by now.”

Jim Eldridge, a Wilmington lawyer representing residents who lived near several municipalities that got the chance to overturn pending annexations, said he will advise his clients to appeal the ruling. An appellate court could issue a stay delaying Joseph’s order until after appeals are completed.

The state Attorney General’s Office, which also defended the laws in court with Eldridge, plans to review the ruling, a spokeswoman said. However, the office of Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said it understands the attorney general plans to appeal.

Eldridge said he was especially disappointed about the ruling for his clients, who had won the right to control their own destiny through the power of submitting petitions.

Home and business owners in unincorporated areas have become fixtures around the Legislative Building in recent years seeking help from lawmakers when their own court challenges to fight involuntary annexations failed. They said cities forced them to pay more taxes and fees to build water and sewer lines to their property lines without commensurate levels of service.

The property owners “had a voice and it was so exciting to see how those people responded to their ability. They organized, they mobilized, they got the petitions signed,” Eldridge said.

The Legislature also could revisit the issue when it returns for its budget-adjustment session in May. Berger wrote to municipal leaders in December warning them against “frivolous and abusive legal maneuvers” to challenge the annexation rules. He also suggested the General Assembly could pass more legislation to effectively cancel the pending involuntary annexations simply by repealing them altogether.

Berger spokeswoman Amy Auth said Tuesday that the Senate leader “will continue to protect property owners from tax-hungry municipalities.”

The North Carolina League of Municipalities, which was not involved in the lawsuit, believes its member towns and cities certainly have the right to pursue court action, but it also respects the General Assembly’s decision to develop reasonable annexation reform, according to group lobbyist Kelli Kukura.

She said the league would like to work with legislative leaders to find another compromise that would create a more “inclusive petition process” and change the prospect of a municipality having to provide more extensive water and sewer service at no charge to new residents.

“The citizens deserve strong, vibrant communities both now and into the future,” Kukura said, adding “We are ready to continue working with the General Assembly to try to reach that goal.”

By GARY D. ROBERTSON
(Associated Press)
Mar 27, 7:18 PM EDT

RALEIGH – A plan to change the way North Carolina calculates its fuel tax could tamp down price fluctuations, says a legislator behind the effort.

State Rep. Mitch Gillespie, a Republican from Marion, says he and others want to do away with a variable component of the formula used to calculate the fuel tax. Under that formula, North Carolina taxes gasoline and diesel fuel at 17.5 cents a gallon, plus 7 percent of the average wholesale price during a recent six-month period. The rate is adjusted each January and July.

Gillespie last year was a chief proponent of a House bill that would have temporarily capped the state’s total tax at 35 cents a gallon. That bill died upon reaching the Senate, and the tax rose to 38.9 cents on Jan. 1, from 35 cents.

Senate Leader Phil Berger, an Eden Republican, says his chamber didn’t act on the measure because doing so would have forced the N.C. Department of Transportation to delay several road projects, triggering job losses. Berger pledged to revisit the issue in 2012, possibly with an unspecified cut.

Gillespie says a goal is to separate the tax from semi-annual fluctuations in fuel prices to make them more predictable. He characterizes the idea as putting a “cap” on the per-gallon tax.

Compared to many other states, North Carolina handles more roadwork at the state rather than at the local level. The fuel tax varies with wholesale prices because motor fuels and asphalt, a key component in road building, both tend to rise and fall with crude oil prices.

NCDOT spokeswoman Greer Beaty says the agency frequently discusses tax and budget matters with legislators, but could not comment specifically on Gillespie’s plan.

A more stable tax rate could help businesses with large fleets to budget their fuel expenses. While most of those expenses would continue to vary with world oil prices, the variable portion of the tax often accounts for 5 cents a gallon of the annual fluctuations. The tax’s 6.4-cent increase since the first half of 2011 has been its largest annual increase in state history, according to the N.C. Department of Revenue.

The diesel tax cuts both ways for Martin Marietta Materials Inc., a Raleigh company and the nation’s second largest producer of aggregates for road building. CFO Anne Lloyd says sustained increases in prices force the company to analyze and adjust the paths its trucks take at quarry sites.

At the same time, the company depends on federal and state fuel taxes to fund road building – a core feeder of Martin Marietta’s sales. “There’s going to have to be increased funding for the state to fund the infrastructure it needs,” she says.

by Chris Bagley, Staff Writer
(Triangle Business Journal)
Date: Friday, March 16, 2012, 6:00am EDT

For the 7,000 cities and towns that receive Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds each year, directly or indirectly, concerns are growing that that the foundation for transformative community projects is beginning to crumble. Over the last two years, Congress has cut funding for the CDBG program more than 25 percent, from about $4 billion to $2.9 billion, which is divided among 1,200 cities and 50 states. For a program with enormous bipartisan support from leaders elected to local office, the recent drop in support from Congress, as measured by House and Senate letters on spending priorities, appears well out of step with hometown priorities.

Every year, Members of Congress are given a deadline to tell the House and Senate Appropriations Committees what programs, if any, they consider funding priorities. Appropriators take these recommendations into consideration as they write spending bills.

Unfortunately, growing pressure to reduce the federal deficit has complicated the traditional processes by which members of Congress signal support for programs. In the case of CDBG, the number of senators and representatives willing to sign annual CDBG support letters to the Appropriations Committee has been shrinking. Worse yet, the growing partisan divide threatens to pin the fate of programs like CDBG to just one party at the federal level, despite support across parties, demographics and sectors at the local level. The divide is reflected in how increasingly lopsided Congressional CDBG support letters have become.

Last week, however, marked a small reversal of these trends, thanks in large part to calls from local elected officials and state municipal leagues.

In the House, the Pennsylvania delegation led the way. Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.) wrote and circulated a letter arguing for greater federal investment in CDBG grants at $3.4 billion for FY 2013. Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) joined Brady as the top Republican to cosign the letter and gave the request an important bipartisan boost in the House that it hadn’t received last year. In total, 137 members of the House signed the Brady-Barletta CDBG support letter to the Appropriations Committee, an increase of more than 50 compared to last year.

In the Senate, as in past years, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) authored and circulated a letter urging Senate Appropriators to raise CDBG funding to $3.3 billion for FY 2013. Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), responding to significant outreach from local officials and others in his state, joined Leahy in signing the letter. In total, 33 senators signed the Leahy-Brown CDBG support letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee, a gain of five over last year.

The potential impact of the House and Senate CDBG support letters on FY 2013 funding depends on many factors, including how budget sequestration is dealt with. And bipartisan support for CDBG remains much too lopsided. However, lifting the trend in Congressional support for CDBG is a significant accomplishment and, more importantly, a necessary first step to reversing the downward trend in funding.

Another step, almost as important as supporting CDBG directly, is to ask if the overall funding level allocated to each Appropriations Subcommittee is adequate to fund federal programs at sufficient levels. This overall funding level, called a 302(b) allocation, can largely determine the fate of federal funding for programs before appropriations bills are even written.

For instance, programs administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Department of Transportation (DOT) are funded annually under one single 302(b) allocation. In recent years, community planning and development programs like CDBG have not fared well in this division. Rather than cut funding across the board for all programs when 302(b) allocations wavered, Congress has, reasonably, chosen to maintain investments in job-creating transportation programs and sufficient funding for existing housing rental vouchers. Generally, then, any overall reduction in funds necessarily fall on programs comprising the development side of HUD, such as CDBG and, last year, Sustainable Communities Grants.

Earlier this year, in an effort to provide appropriators with the necessary additional resources to fulfill House and Senate CDBG funding request letters, NLC spearheaded a large coalition of HUD and DOT stakeholders to urge Congress to increase the overall DOT-HUD 302(b) allocation. A total of 178 organizations joined NLC on the letter to Congressional leaders.

NLC expects Congress to set 302(b) allocations sometime in the next three weeks. Soon after, appropriators will release their first drafts of FY 2013 spending bills that give funding levels for individual federal programs like CDBG. After that, local leaders and stakeholders will have a small number of additional opportunities through amendments and House/Senate negotiations to impact funding for their priorities.

The letters and lists of those who signed can be found on NLC’s website.

March 26, 2012
(NLC)
by Mike Wallace

RALEIGH — Garden Williams Road was paved last year.

Actually, the paving covered a one-mile stretch of the road, which parallels Interstate 95 in northern Cumberland County and intersects N.C. 82.

Once the trees were cut down, the road graded, a culvert replaced and the asphalt laid down, the cost came to $728,547.

One small, single-family home sits on Garden Williams Road. Just after the new asphalt ends, a half-mile driveway leads to another home.

Garden Williams Road is a good example of why some state legislators and legislative staff have been arguing that the state’s dirt road paving program has about run its course, that it has become increasingly difficult to justify paving much of the remaining state-maintained dirt road in North Carolina.

Department of Transportation officials point out that many unpaved roads remain in some counties, particularly in the mountains where the cost of grading and paving twisting roadways is much higher.

Even so, numbers that the DOT recently provided me show that the questions that keep popping up about the funding need to keep being asked.

In the last fiscal year, the state spent $69.3 million paving roughly 200 miles of dirt road. About 4,400 miles of state-maintained, unpaved road remains. More than two-thirds of that total are on what the department calls a “hold list,” meaning that there have been right-of-way issues that could cause problems with the projects.

That leaves 1,475 miles of unpaved road eligible to be placed on county priority lists for paving.

The numbers suggest that after 30 years of a focused effort to put asphalt down on the remaining state-maintained dirt roads, there isn’t a whole lot of dirt road left out there that isn’t fairly cost prohibitive, faced with right-of-way problems, or presents environmental and permitting issues.

None of this has been lost on legislators.

In the current fiscal year, $47.5 million was cut out of the dirt road paving program. The majority of the money was shifted to maintenance of existing secondary roads, resurfacing existing roads and bridge improvements.

In 2005, legislators created more flexibility in the secondary road funding program, allowing county officials and DOT district engineers to decide whether to put money toward improving existing paved secondary roads or toward paving dirt roads.

Perhaps the people who pay for all this paving, the taxpayers of North Carolina, should look on these changes and decide that their elected officials have a pretty good handle on the issue.

But you might come to a different conclusion if, while driving north on Interstate 95 through Cumberland County, you look over to your right to see a three-quarters of a million dollar piece of blacktop fronting a single home.

Maybe that piece of road indicates that state’s approach to road paving needs a little more review.

Maybe it means that state leaders should acknowledge that some stretches of dirt road just can’t justify a costly coating of asphalt.

By Scott Mooneyham
(The Mountaineer)
March 26, 2012

Legislative Republicans may soon head down a path that always seemed to befuddle their Democratic predecessors.

Assuming that they still control the North Carolina General Assembly in 2013, GOP lawmakers say that they will take a stab at tax reform.

Democrats talked a lot about the same subject for a number of years.

Gov. Beverly Perdue, near the end of her first year in office, called tax reform “a must-do.” Before that, former Gov. Mike Easley created a commission to examine reworking the state’s tax structure.

During both the Perdue and Easley administrations, various heads of the House and Senate Finance committees have discussed a major overhaul of the state’s tax laws.

Even before then, in 1998, I remember talking about the issue with a prominent Republican legislator during the GOP’s earlier reign in the House.

In just about every case, the ideas discussed involved broadening the sales tax to cover services like car repairs and legal representation while lowering the overall tax rate. Behind the ideas lay the notion that, in an increasingly service-based economy, a sales tax focused mainly on goods doesn’t reflect or keep pace with economic growth.

The efforts never went anywhere. Without any hue and cry, the politicians had little to gain and everything to lose by shaking up the status quo.

Closed-door discussions about tax reform are apparently again in vogue in the Legislative Building.

Republican ideas, though, may involve much more than expanding the sales tax base.

House Speaker Thom Tillis recently mentioned doing away with the personal income tax as an idea worth considering. Republicans may also be reviving the idea of eliminating the corporate income tax, as well as dropping state estate taxes.

No one enjoys paying taxes, so perhaps everyone should stand up and cheer on the honorables.

Supporters of eliminating income taxes see an added benefit of better competing economically with states like Tennessee and Florida, which don’t have personal income taxes.

Legislators might want to consider, though, that Tennessee has the highest state and local sales taxes in the country. Florida has some of the highest (and wackiest) property taxes in the country.

As for North Carolina, slightly more than half of our annual tax revenue — $9.7 billion — comes from individual income taxes. Another $1 billion or so comes from corporate income taxes.

To make up that revenue solely through the sales tax would require that those tax rates nearly triple, or that you taxed so much new stuff that they raised almost three times the current $5.9 billion in revenue.

Or, perhaps you just throw off current state responsibilities onto local government, like a lot of other states do.

However you bite at this green apple, you are going to get a little sick. Whether lawyers collecting sales taxes or property owners paying higher property taxes, someone will see to that.

It’s why Democrats kept putting the apple back on the shelf, hoping it would ripen a bit.

By Scott Mooneyham
The Mountaineer
March 26, 2012

House Republican plans to quickly pass a three-month extension of the transportation law Monday are in jeopardy.

GOP leaders set up a vote Monday requiring two-thirds of voting members to approve the extension. But Democratic leaders are urging their members to oppose the bill — nearly 50 Democrats would have to break ranks for the bill to pass — and GOP leaders may simply pull it from the floor as a result.

“There’s a possibility it could get pulled,” a Republican aide told POLITICO. If that happens, the leadership would instead use a rule to bring the bill to the floor, which requires a simple majority to pass.

But bringing it up later in the week isn’t a sure thing either. The conservative Heritage Action for America warned members against voting for an extension, saying the group “remains opposed to any transportation measure that exceeds incoming revenues to the federal Highway Trust Fund.”

Democrats have rallied against the 90-day extension as they try to force House leaders into taking up a bipartisan two-year bill approved by the Senate several weeks ago.

“Allowing Republicans another 12 weeks would do nothing but feed their dangerous addiction to serial extensions and damaging delays, which are causing uncertainty and chaos at the start of the construction season, when we could be working together to send a bipartisan bill to the president today,” said Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Behind closed doors, Senate Democrats are quietly drafting their own 45- or 60-day stopgap, Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) told industry groups last week.
Transportation programs would expire and the gas tax would drop to 4.3 cents per gallon on Sunday without another extension.

If the bill isn’t voted on Monday, the extension could be added to the House Rules Committee markup already scheduled for 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

A transportation lobbyist confirmed that the scheduling swap is under active consideration, and said it’s exactly what Democrats have wanted all along — and why they’ve been planning to vote no on the extension.

“They want to have an opportunity to tack on the Senate-passed bill, and they would have to bring that to the Rules Committee for that to happen,” the aide said. “Of course Rules would probably not allow it. But to make a political statement, Democrats certainly have every right to do that.”

If the extension does end up being added to Tuesday’s Rules markup, the measure could end up back on the House floor under a rule as soon as Wednesday.

By: Adam Snider and Kathryn A. Wolfe
(Politico)
March 26, 2012 04:01 PM EDT

Fayetteville, N.C. — The Fayetteville City Council accepted the city manager’s resignation Monday after what sources call a rift over police searches during traffic stops.

Assistant City Manager Kristoff Bauer will take over April 1 as interim city manager. The council hired Florida search firm Colin Baenziger & Associates to help fill the position permanently.

Sources within City Hall said that a majority of the city council wanted Iman, who had been city manager since 2006, to step down after he opposed the council’s 8-2 vote in January ordering police to stop searches of vehicles where drivers have given their consent.

Police are allowed to continue the searches under an injunction issued by a judge presiding over a lawsuit filed by police who say that the ban is unlawful and that consent searches are an important law enforcement tool.

Some residents and local groups, including a minority lawyers association and the NAACP, raised concerns last year that the police force might be illegally profiling black drivers.

A consultant’s report concluded that blacks were disproportionately subjected to traffic stops and warrantless searches in Fayetteville, but evidence didn’t prove that officers were guilty of racial profiling. The report recommends changes, including the creation of a complaint review panel.

Fayetteville police have implemented some changes, including requiring written consent for searches.
(WRAL.com)