A Guide to Business Improvement Districts in North Carolina

A city’s governing board wishes to support and promote its downtown area. It wants to install sidewalks and street lighting. It wants to renovate the storefronts that line its main street. It wants to hire personnel to provide additional security in the area. It wants to invest in downtown art initiatives and other beautification projects. It wants to sponsor a series of festivals and markets in the city center. Finally, it wants to aggressively market its downtown area and local businesses. But how can the city pay for it all? Read more »

Tapping Private Resources for Construction of Public Facilities – Some Legal Limitations Local Government Officials Should Know About

Times are tough and money is tight. Public officials and private developers, trying to imagine new and creative ways to finance and construct needed infrastructure, might suggest a new approach: A private developer will front the money to build a new public facility or renovate an existing building for public use. The project might use property owned by the private developer, perhaps in an area that the local government would like to see improved or developed.  Or the local government may own property for the project that it will transfer to a private developer, so that the developer can use it as security to obtain private financing. The private developer will finance and construct the project, which will then be leased back to the local government over a period of time, with title eventually transferring back to the local government. The cost of construction is repaid through the lease payments.  The local government gets its facility without having to raise taxes or borrow money and the developer uses its resources to finance and construct the project in a cost effective and efficient manner. Sounds like a win-win. Can North Carolina local governments do it? Read more »

Preserving Minutes and Other Permanent Records

The clerk to a local governing board writes that her board, like most boards these days, is interested in finding ways to save money.  Two of their ideas deal with maintaining minutes of board meetings.… Read more »

One Attorney for Multiple Local Governments?

How many local government clients are too many? If an attorney represents a county, is that attorney precluded from also representing a city in that county? What about representing multiple counties or multiple cities?

These questions are of great concern to attorneys, of course, because of their professional responsibility obligations. But they should also be important to the local governments who might retain attorneys with multiple governmental clients, because of the risk that such conflicts could present. Read more »

Is Metadata a Public Record? Part 2

In my last post I defined metadata and summarized the three cases (in other states) that have addressed whether, and to what extent, metadata is a public record. I concluded that post by asking what we might glean from these cases to determine how North Carolina’s public records laws apply to metadata. The simple answer to that question is “not much.” Those cases involved interpretations of different public records laws and each addressed different types of metadata. And, not surprisingly, the three courts arrived at somewhat different conclusions with respect to the application of their states’ public record laws to the metadata at issue. Perhaps the only useful thing to note is that all three courts determined that at least some metadata constituted a public record and, as such, was subject to public disclosure, at least when the metadata was specifically requested.

Having said that, I would like to reframe the inquiry for purposes of this post to address the following two questions: (1) Under North Carolina law, what, if any, metadata is part of a public record that exists in an electronic form? and (2) Under North Carolina law, what does it mean for metadata to be part of a public record for purposes of public access to that metadata? Read more »

Holding Over After Your Term Ends (revisited)

An apparent constitutional difference in filling vacancies to appointed and to elected offices—a difference that raised some puzzling questions—did not faze the North Carolina Supreme Court in its ruling March 12, 2010, in the case of

Can We Hit the Pause Button on Development Approvals?

On Monday morning the River City newspaper contains a story on the new phenomenon of internet sweepstakes cafes – how they operate, how they are technically different from video poker, and their rapid proliferation around the state. Towards the end of the article there is a brief quote from the owner of a chain of these establishments that he plans to expand his operations to some vacant buildings in downtown River City.

Enjoying a quick breakfast at the diner, the Mayor of River City almost chokes on her sausage biscuit when she reads this tidbit. Trouble in River City. She takes a last gulp of coffee, pays up, and hustles down the block to town hall. Reaching the manager’s office nearly out of breath she asks if the town’s codes would allow one of these businesses downtown. After a quick consult with the planner, the manager answers that the town codes are totally silent on the issue as nobody in River City had ever heard of a “internet sweepstakes café” prior to the last month or two, much less put anything about them in the zoning ordinance. The mayor asks if the town council can put a hold on the permitting for these cafes while they figure out if they should be allowed at all and if so, where and under what conditions. Is this possible? Read more »