Required Municipal Services

If you live in a North Carolina municipality (city, town, village), what services is your municipal government required to provide or what functions is it required to serve? Is your municipality required to collect your garbage? Must it establish zoning regulations? How about maintain streets or provide street lighting? Abate nuisances? Provide recreation services? Is it mandated to provide social services or ensure the availability of affordable housing? Are water and sewer services required? Fire protection? What about law enforcement? Read more »

Spending Local Government Tax Money to Influence State Legislation

Suppose the North Carolina General Assembly is considering a bill that would affect cities, and suppose the town council of a particular city decides to lobby against the bill.  Can the council spend money from its tax resources for that purpose?  Can it, for example, send the city manager to Raleigh to talk to legislators and pay for his expenses?  Could it send a busload of city employees to Raleigh to fan out through the legislative halls?

Based on precious little North Carolina case law, the answer appears to be “Yes.”  As long as the city is not using tax money to influence the outcome of an election, it probably can use the money to influence legislation.  And the same applies to other units of government—counties, school units, and others. Read more »

Funding Capital Projects in a BID (Business Improvement District)

As discussed in a previous post, a North Carolina municipality may establish a special tax district that encompasses its central downtown area to raise money to fund “downtown revitalization.” See G.S. 160A-536(a)(2). The special tax district is commonly referred to as a Business Improvement District or BID. Many municipalities create and maintain BIDs to provide targeted services in their downtown areas—such as marketing, additional security, supplementary trash collection, and community activities to enhance the downtown area and promote and benefit its commercial entities. (And several contract with private entities to “manage” the BIDs.) Questions often arise, however, as to whether a unit may engage in capital projects in a BID and, if so, what type and how are the projects funded? Read more »

Taking (Personal) Advantage of Public Contracts

Carolina County has just awarded a contract for uPad tablet computers. Bill Goats, the purchasing officer for Carolina County, is having lunch with his friend in the public works department, Steve Jabs. Bill mentions the contract to Steve. “My daughter won’t stop talking about those uPads,” Steve says. “She really wants one.” 

“Yeah, my son wants one, too,” says Bill.

“Wait a minute,” Steve says excitedly, “could we buy uPads off of the County’s contract for our kids? I’m sure you got a good deal for them.”

“Of course I did,” replies Bill, “but I don’t think we can do that.”

“Why not?” asks Steve. “We wouldn’t be stealing anything. We’d pay for them.”

“I don’t know,” says Bill. “That just doesn’t sound right to me.” Read more »

New Federal Rules for Bank Account Attachments

[Update: In 2013 the federal government issued new regulations concerning this issue. See this blog post for more details.]

 Bank accounts are prime targets for tax collectors thanks to the quick and easy attachment procedures in the Machinery Act that are available for the collection of any local tax.  But what happens when a bank account contains Social Security benefits or other federal payments that are exempt from attachment?  Is the entire account off limits? If not, who determines how much of the account can be attached?

Thanks to a lack of clear statutory guidance, confusion often reigns. Tax collectors, banks, and taxpayers routinely haggle over when, where, and how exempt benefits can be attached if they are mingled with other funds.

New federal rules that take effect May 1 should eliminate much of this confusion. Happily for tax collectors, banks will now have the obligation to identify and protect exempt federal benefits.  But tax collectors will need to be concerned about some timing issues after the new rules are implemented. Read more »

Outdoor Advertising: Winning the Preemption Game

UPDATE September 2013:  Legislation adopted by the 2013 General Assembly extends state law preemption to existing outdoor advertising signs that conform to state rules and local ordinances.  Section 8(b) of S.L. 2013 – 413 adds a new G.S. 136-131.2 to provide as follows:

            § 136-131.2. Modernization of outdoor advertising devices.

No municipality, county, local or regional zoning authority, or other political subdivision shall, without the payment of just compensation as provided for in   G.S.136-131.1, regulate or prohibit the repair or reconstruction of any outdoor advertising for which there is in effect a valid permit issued by the Department of Transportation so long as the square footage of its advertising surface area is not increased. As used in this section, reconstruction includes the changing of an existing multipole outdoor advertising structure to a new monopole structure.

Outdoor advertising owners along federal and state primary highways will not only be able to rebuild old signs and consolidate them.  In addition, this language may well open the door to allowing them to replace traditional advertising displays with digital billboards.  Note that local governments will not, in the absence of payment, to regulate this process.  

Have your NCAA basketball tournament picks got you down? Is it too difficult to pick winners? Too many upsets and your predictions too uncertain? Well, I have pretty much a sure bet for you, a no-brainer, a slam dunk. In a head-to-head matchup between a state law and a local regulation, put your money on the state law. In the case of inconsistency between a North Carolina state law and a city or county regulation, the law of Tar Heel state government will prevail. What is it? It’s preemption. Read more »

Self-Executing Constitutional Provisions

This session, legislators have introduced bills (House Bill 87, Senate Bill 67) proposing to amend the North Carolina Constitution to create a right of access to public records, and to require that all meetings of public bodies be open. The law preserves existing provisions of law dealing with these subjects, and creates additional requirements for future exceptions to those laws. As of this writing, the House version has been converted to an amendment to the public records statute, but the Senate version is still framed as a constitutional amendment. An interesting aspect of the proposed constitutional amendment is that it specifically provides that it is “self-executing.” What does that mean?

This blog reviews some of the existing case law on self-executing constitutional provisions, and raises questions about how the proposed amendment might be interpreted. Read more »