Published: July 20, 2008 11:07 pm            

Buck plans to renew annexation bill

There are 21 states that don’t allow involuntary annexation

State Sen. Jim Buck’s house might not be annexed under Kokomo Mayor Greg Goodnight’s ambitious plan, but the veteran state lawmaker is far from finished with the issue.

Buck, a longtime proponent of property rights, said last week he will author legislation to weaken cities’ ability to annex during the next session of the Indiana General Assembly.

While Buck, who was picked this summer to fill out former State Sen. Jeff Drozda’s term, hasn’t yet decided the exact wording of his planned bill, he’s made it clear it would basically end involuntary annexation in the state.

Under Buck’s planned legislation, Indiana would become the 16th state to require a simple majority vote from those being annexed before any annexation could move forward.

“A 51 percent majority, to me, ought to be a pretty clear indication if the community wants it,” Buck said Thursday.

“The primary purpose of annexation is to accommodate growth,” Buck told an audience of annexation remonstrators during a meeting at Chapel Hill Christian Church last week. “But it has gotten to the point where it’s being done not to accommodate growth, but to accommodate debt.”

Fifteen states already operate under a ‘51 Percent Rule,’ according to a study of state annexation laws compiled by Indianapolis attorneys Bryan Babb and Stephen Unger. New Jersey requires a petition signed by 60 percent of those being annexed, and five other states don’t simply don’t allow annexation

Indiana — one of the 29 states to allow a form of involuntary annexation — requires a supermajority to override annexation, in the form of a petition signed by 65 percent of the property owners in a targeted annexation area.

Last week, local remonstrators against Goodnight’s proposed West Side Annexation said it would probably be impossible for their group to get that many signatures.

Buck, however, said he’ll work with State Sen. Bev Gard, R-Greenfield, to craft legislation. Gard was co-author with Drozda on a far-reaching annexation bill early this year. That bill passed the Senate by a single vote, but didn’t advance in the House.

Getting rid of the waivers?

In addition to the 51 Percent Rule, Buck said he also wants a provision putting time limits on how long remonstrance waivers can remain in effect.

Remonstrance waivers, which usually remain with the title to a property, regardless of how many times the property is sold, are often required by municipalities before city sewer service is extended to a new subdivision.

The remonstrance waivers set up the terms of a contract: In return for sewers, the property owners give up the right to fight an annexation.

Jamie Palmer, an IUPUI professor of urban planning and co-author of a much-discussed 1998 study on annexation in Indiana, said making the waivers illegal — or even nullifying them retroactively as Drozda attempted — could have far-reaching effects.

“I’m very concerned about the waiver thing, because that’s the way we get water and sewers out to folks in unincorporated areas,” she said. “If the municipalities don’t have any way to compel property owners [to be annexed into the city] ... I think they’ll stop [extending water and sewers].

“We depend on municipalities to help solve some of our wastewater problems,” she said.

One question often asked of those who consider remonstrance waivers either coercive or unconstitutional, is whether a city should likewise be able to opt out of its end of the deal.

In other words, if homeowners go to court to nullify waivers, should a city also be able to declare the presumed contract void, and discontinue sewer service?

Asked that question, Buck merely repeated his assertion that the waivers can be “of a coercive nature.”

“And if it’s ecomically feasible to send sewers with a waiver, with no end in sight for when a city will annex, then why should the waiver last forever? It’s either fiscally responsible to bring the service, or it’s not,” Buck said.

Goodnight suggested Buck was simply playing politics with the issue.

“Where has Jim Buck been? He’s been in the state legislature 14 years, and he’s done nothing on the subject [of annexation], and now that it’s a hot-button issue, we’ve woken him up,” Goodnight said.

“Jim Buck should look at his district and remember he represents the citizens of Kokomo, and not just the people who are the most vocal today.”

Bill could be scaled back

The Drozda/Gard bill contained several provisions beyond the waiver provision and the 51 Percent Rule, aimed at specific annexations both legislators were fighting.

For instance, one provision would have specifically nullified any annexation started after a certain date in 2006. Babb, one of the attorneys for the city of Carmel in the fight to annex the Clay Township area Home Place, said the provision was a legislative attempt to kill the city’s annexation ordinance.

Another of Drozda’s provisions would have basically nullified all existing remonstrance waivers. Buck said he could see putting a 10-year time limit on the waivers, although he said he wasn’t sure if he’d try to make the time limit apply retroactively.

Drozda’s bill may also have lost votes because of a provision allowing small, unincorporated towns or hamlets to incorporate, thus making them off-limits to annexation from nearby cities. Current law doesn’t allow those areas to incorporate if they’re within a certain distance from a municipality.

Buck said he’ll try to be fair in his legislation, saying that while the Drozda/Gard bill had much in it “with real, solid merits,” “at the same time, I don’t want my bill to be hindered by something we can fight at a later date.”

Palmer said that after the legislative battle earlier this year, she fully expects to see the issue resurface in the next General Assembly.

Indiana’s annexation laws have tilted back toward annexation opponents somewhat in recent decades, with the addition of the 65 percent petition option and time limits for providing city services.

And until the legislature changed the law in the 1990s, remonstrators couldn’t argue against the merits of an annexation in court, only whether or not the correct process was followed, Palmer noted.

But tighten the rules too far, “and you could get cities that are landlocked because they don’t have willing landowners around them,” she said. “What could happen is that a lot of people will plunk themselves down right outside of municipalities. It becomes an issue of fairness.”

Scott Smith may be reached at (765) 454-8569 or via e-mail at scott.smith@kokomotribune.com

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.