Local Government Authority: Piecing it Together

Students of local government law learn first and foremost that all local governments get their powers from the state. In North Carolina, local authority comes primarily from local and general laws enacted by the General Assembly. A particular city may be governed by a mix of 1) its charter, which is a local act of the General Assembly, 2) numerous general statutes, mostly, but not entirely, found in Chapter 160A, 3) assorted local acts, and perhaps, 4) local ordinances modifying its structure, as authorized under the general law. How can the officials and citizens of a North Carolina city or county sort all of this out to get an accurate picture of the powers and structures that affect them? Fortunately, the general statutes provide some guidance, but finding all the relevant pieces and fitting them together can be challenging. Read more »

North Carolina’s Presidential Primary

Voting for president is weird.

When we go to the polls at the general election in November and think we are voting for one candidate or another, we’re not.  Not a single North Carolinian voted for John McCain or Barak Obama in 2008.  We were really voting for a slate of electors who were bound under law to vote for our candidate in the Electoral College a month later.  (“A vote for the candidates named on the ballot shall be a vote for the electors,” says North Carolina law.)  The Electoral College elects the president.  The intricacies of how that works are described here.  In November 2012, we will do it again.

The presidential primary in May is just as strange.  We think that we are voting for one candidate or another for the nomination of our political party, but, again, that’s not really what we are doing. Read more »

Advertising Tax Liens

It’s February, which means that tax lien advertising season is right around the corner.  Early this month tax collectors must report to their governing boards the delinquent taxes that are liens on real property.  Governing boards then issue orders to advertise those liens.  With this in mind, consider the following statements and determine which, if any, are true.

1.   Tax lien advertisements are mandatory only for counties that use the in rem foreclosure process.

2.   Tax liens may be advertised on a county’s web site in lieu of a newspaper ad.

3.   Tax liens must be advertised in the largest newspaper in the county.

4.   Roy Williams will win his third national championshionship this April and solidify his claim as the greatest basketball coach in the Triangle. 

Well, number 4 is obviously false—I’ll take Coach K’s 900+ wins over Roy and his missing 14 seconds in a heartbeat.  But what about the first three statements?

They’re false, too.  Read on for the details . . . Read more »

Building Occupancy and Turning on the Juice

My blog from December 15 of last year (“Preoccupied with Occupancy Certificates: Part I”) was intended to provide an introduction to the use of a certificates of occupancy (CO) by local inspections agencies to ensure that a development project is ready for use before it is occupied. This blog concerns the interplay between certificates of occupancy and the connection of electric power to a building or other structure. Read more »

Did the Legislature Redistrict in the Wrong Year?

North Carolina has a proud 30-year history of almost continuous litigation over legislative and congressional redistricting, described here. The lawsuits for our new decade have started and previous roles have been reversed. Republicans used to complain about maps drawn by Democrats. Now Democrats are objecting to Republican plans.

The Democrats and other plaintiffs in their 2011 lawsuits have not asked a fundamental question — a question that also was not asked by the Republicans and other litigants back in 2001 or 1991 or any time before — Should the General Assembly have redistricted at all? Or put another way: Did the state constitution tell the legislature to redraw its House and Senate districts in 2011 or were legislators supposed to wait until 2013? The point is moot for this round of redistricting, but it is an intriguing, longstanding and long ignored question of constitutional interpretation that deserves to be answered clearly before the next census.

And the answer depends on what you think “return” means. Read more »

Local Sales and Use Tax Distributions: Where Does the Money Go?

UPDATE DECEMBER 2015: During the 2015 legislative session, the General Assembly made changes to local sales and use tax allocations. The effective date of the changes is July 1, 2016. For more information on those changes, click here. Note that the changes are not reflected in the post below.

True or False:

Counties and municipalities always must distribute a portion of their local sales and use tax proceeds to other taxing districts (such as county and municipal service districts, rural fire protection districts, and school supplemental tax districts). Read more »

Board Member Financial Interest: Mapping the Points on the Continuum

We say it until we’re blue in the face: municipal and county governing board members have a duty to vote. There is no authority to abstain, or to be excused for a mere “appearance of impropriety.” Instead, state law is specific about when members can be excused from voting. Two blog posts about these statutes are here, and here. Most often, questions about voting center around a board member’s financial interest in a matter that comes before the board. Municipal and county governing boards make lots of decisions that affect citizens’ pocket books. Governing board members are citizens too. Clearly, members can’t be excused from voting on every decision that affects them financially to any extent. There would be no one left to vote on some matters. How should a board determine which financial interests are sufficient to allow, or require, that a board member be excused from voting?

A common approach is to consider the different types of financial interests as lining up along a continuum: that is, along a line which has, at one end, a situation in which the board member is affected in the same way as all other citizens (such as, when voting on the property tax rate), and on the other end, a situation where the board member is the only person affected (such as, when the matter involves only the board member’s property or business and no one else’s). Of course, most of the situations boards face fall somewhere in between these two extremes. In addition, due process requirements and statutory voting provisions affect the standard to be applied, depending upon the nature of the matter that is the subject of the vote. This blog post summarizes the standards that apply to different types of issues that boards face, and suggests some factors to consider in reaching a conclusion about what constitutes a matter involving a board member’s financial interest. Read more »