Wearing Several Hats: Multiple and Ex Officio Office-Holding

In an earlier blog, I discussed the meaning of “public office.”  As promised, I will now examine multiple and ex officio office-holding. Read more »

Tax bills? We don’t need no stinkin’ tax bills.

With apologies to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the title of this post accurately summarizes my usual response when asked about the consequences facing a local government that fails to deliver property tax bills in a timely fashion.   N.C. property tax law does not require tax bills, meaning that the absence of a bill generally has no effect on the taxing unit’s authority to collect an otherwise valid tax.  

GS 105-348 puts all taxpayers on notice that their property may be subject to tax, even if the taxpayers never receive actual notice of the taxes due. Combine that with the “immaterial irregularity” provision in GS 105-394 that excuses most defects in administration of the property tax, and it’s clear that local governments can collect all authorized taxes regardless of when or whether they send bills to their taxpayers.

At least I thought that point was clear until I read a recent decision issued by the N.C. Property Tax Commission (“PTC”), the state board that hears taxpayer appeals from assessment decisions by county boards of equalization and review. Read more »

Citizen Participation Information as Public Record

UPDATE August 2013: In 2011, a new exception was enacted to limit access to local government email subscriber lists. Click here for a summary of this exception.

Local governments work hard to engage and inform their citizens. Technology now provides an increasing number of ways to provide information to and receive information from citizens. From plain old Web pages and email, to Twitter and Facebook, citizens who are willing to log on, sign up, tune in, upload, download, link in, or just visit, can do business with, learn about, and express their opinions about their local governments. But here’s the rub: citizens who communicate electronically with local governments may be giving up more than just their time and effort in the process. In many cases, citizen information that is provided to or obtained by a local government is a public record. And under the public record laws that means anyone may have access to or copies of that information and the local government is not allowed to inquire about or limit what a requester does with the information. (See G.S. 132-6(b).) This post discusses what types of citizen information local governments have, and how much of it may be subject to public inspection and access. Read more »

Singled Out. A Problem in Enforcement?

The city has just issued you a notice of zoning violation. Other folks are doing the same thing you are and none of them have been cited. You believe the citation was prompted by the personal animosity of a city official rather than a concern about protecting the neighborhood or community. If your suspicions are right and you have been singled out for an enforcement action, is that a defense to the city’s action? Read more »

Bidding Confidential

Your local government has just awarded a contract for digital imaging software to Super Secret Software, Inc., after considering several proposals submitted in response to your request for proposals. Sour Grapes Software, LLC, one of the vendors who submitted a proposal but was not awarded the contract, calls to ask you for a copy of Super Secret Software’s proposal. When you pull Super Secret Software’s proposal from your file, you see that every page of the proposal is stamped “CONFIDENTIAL.” What do you do? Read more »

Blood Exposures and Disease Control Law

UPDATE September 28, 2016: An updated version of this post has been published and is available here. 

Some of the most interesting questions I get are about exposure to human blood. My work in this area predates the current craze for vampire literature–it’s a long-standing public health issue that arises out of fact scenarios that are sometimes pretty gross but always interesting. I’ve heard tales of a jail inmate who bit off part of another inmate’s ear, a school child who found a discarded syringe and then stuck several other children with the (presumably used) needle, and a fast food worker who bled on food that others ingested. More common are the stories of biting or other blood-drawing altercations, or exposures that occur at accident scenes. What all of these stories have in common is that they may result in someone being exposed to a bloodborne pathogen–a disease that is spread by exposure to blood, such as HIV or hepatitis B. Read more »

What Is A Local Act?

In this blog post, I mentioned that a local government could obtain a “local act” exempting a privately funded projected from the otherwise applicable bidding requirements. This post is designed for people who may not be familiar with local acts. It answers the following questions: What is a local act? How does a local act relate to the general laws that govern local governments? What is the procedure for obtaining a local act? Is there anything that can’t be done by local act? Where can I find local acts? Read more »