RALEIGH A bill to restrict local governments' land purchases resurfaced in the state House early Thursday after being voted down in committee Monday, but only after its scope was significantly narrowed.
The bill would originally have required that municipalities and other units of local government get permission from their county commissioners before buying property.
Now it applies only to Ashe and Watauga counties and only to acquisitions in which units of local government are condemning property outside their boundaries.[Asheville Citizen-Times]
Jonathan Jordan’s House Bill 875, entitled “Restrict Municipal Eminent Domain,” did pass the NC House yesterday and is now before the Senate rules and operations committee. It would become effective upon approval instead of July 1st, as in the original wording. If passed, the bill would require the consent of county commissioners within the affected county before a municipality could acquire property by eminent domain ... clearly targeting Boone's intentions of obtaining easements for a water pipeline from the New River.
This nasty little piece of special targeting will pass the Senate because ... it will. Who in the Republican majority in the General Assembly would miss an opportunity to punish the Town of Boone?
But ... this special targeting of Boone seems based on the Nathan Miller Era of the county commission and may not take the true measure of its new County Commission Chair Jimmy Hodges, who is a Chamber of Commerce sort of Democrat-turned-Republican and who is almost guaranteed to like the idea of a new water system (which, need we add, can be completed by Boone, at the expense of Boone citizens, and then blithely seized by the General Assembly for a "regional water authority," with the help, no doubt, of the same Jonathan Jordan).
This is bad business for Boone, all the way around.
3 comments:
Rather than being "anti-Watauga", in this case I think Jordan is being "pro-Ashe County". He represents both counties, and I suspect that opposition to the intake, in the whole, is greater than its proponents among his constituents.
Oh I wouldn't say he's anti-Watauga.... But he's definitely anti-Boone. All of this has nothing to do with the river, and everything to do with trying to punish Boone for being "too liberal." For some reason, conservatives have decided that they must oppose EVERYTHING proposed by any town or entity that is led by Democrats. This shouldn't even be an issue - even towns that are run by Republicans have to deal with water issues and plans for the future. The town of Jefferson also has a water intake on the New River, but you never hear a peep about that one!
Boone needs to get it's water somewhere else.
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