Cities' annexation bans advance as hope for change fades

Related:

Check out bills filed by local legislators

More General Assembly coverage

Kaine twice discouraged legislation to renew the state’s moratorium on annexation, first with a veto in 2007 and then a promise last year to gather cities and counties around a table to talk about sharing revenue instead of competing for it.

The talks took place last summer, but they didn’t resolve much.

As a result, the state Senate will vote today on a bill sponsored by Sen. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg, to continue the annexation moratorium until 2018.

“Virginia is the only state that allows forced annexation of county land without a vote” by the public, Newman told the Senate’s Local Government committee last week.

A similar ban, proposed by Del. Matthew Lohr, R-Augusta County, already has passed in the House of Delegates. Newman’s bill is SB 1287. Lohr’s is HB 1697.

“Annexation is dead, but we haven’t been able to define a meaningful next step about what would take its place,” Kaine said last week.

The governor is ready to consider signing a new moratorium if the legislation reaches his desk, Kaine spokesman Gordon Hickey said.

Lynchburg’s nearest neighbors, Bedford and Campbell counties, sent officials to Richmond last Tuesday to tell senators they wanted the moratorium extended.

Lynchburg’s lobbyist, Linda McMinimy, said the city doesn’t like the moratorium, even though the city doesn’t have any annexation plans.

Lynchburg “thinks the legislation merely maintains the status quo without providing any incentive for a serious discussion of the disadvantages faced by cities, and how to better deliver local-government services on a regional basis,” McMinimy said.

The Virginia Municipal League, a statewide association of cities, also opposed Newman’s bill. But the number of cities that can annex has dropped to just 10 because of population growth in suburban counties.

The league is focused on persuading legislators to find other ways of helping cities “become healthy again,” possibly through revenue sharing, said Mark Flynn, a VML lobbyist.

Newman, too, said he’s looking elsewhere for solutions. Newman said he plans to support a bill by Sen. John Watkins, R-Midlothian, that would amend the state constitution so that cities wouldn’t have to stand alone in solving their problems.

Watkins’ SJ 335 would remove a single word, “independent,” from its description of cities and thereby remove the condition that keeps them apart from counties.

If the amendment were to be approved by two sessions of the General Assembly and then by voters in a referendum, Virginia’s local-government structure would more closely resemble other states.

Campbell and Bedford counties, for their parts, told the senators Tuesday that some regional services already in place with sewer lines and industrial parks.

David Laurrell, Campbell’s county administrator, said Lynchburg agreed in 1996 that it wouldn’t try to annex any county land until at least 2015. The results have included pacts on solid waste, a regional jail and an agreement to share revenue produced by retail developments in the city.

“Finding cooperative solutions is in the best interest of the public, and in annexation there is typically a winner and a loser,” Laurrell said.

John Sharp, chairman of Bedford County supervisors, told the senators that extending the annexation ban would allow Bedford to continue making improvements to schools and roads in the Forest area “without fear they will be taken from us” if Lynchburg were to annex the territory.

“With the extension of the moratorium, Bedford County and Lynchburg city can continue to make wise choices, putting our tax dollars to work and investing in resources where they are needed the most,” Sharp said.

The Virginia cites that still can annex land from neighboring counties are, in addition to Lynchburg: Bristol, Buena Vista, Covington, Danville, Emporia, Galax, Harrisonburg, Norton and Petersburg, Flynn said.

In most metro areas, population density in urbanizing counties has made them immune from annexation under other provisions of state law.