Wake mayors unite behind common wants (The Cary News)

Wake mayors unite behind common wants (The Cary News)

Officials hope state legislators will grant their towns new powers.

In politics, allies often can be one’s biggest asset. Which is why the mayors of Wake County’s 12 municipalities joined forces in advance of the 2010 short session of the state legislature, which begins today, to lobby for local bills that would grant each of their towns new powers.

Some want the authority, for example, to exempt citizen e-mail addresses from public records law. Others wish to retain the right to expand their borders when necessary.

All of them want the General Assembly to avoid usurping local tax dollars to fill in gaps in the state’s budget.

But accomplishing those and other goals can be difficult in a session in which legislators are focused primarily on balancing the state’s budget, said Mayor Harold Weinbrecht of Cary, president of the Wake County Mayors Association.

So he and other Wake County mayors are hoping to better the odds by speaking in unison; at least on issues where they find common ground.

“We thought that as a group, if we had more mayors asking for something in a session that has to be limited to noncontroversial issues, we’d have a better chance of seeing them address those issues,” Weinbrecht said.

It’s the first time in the Wake County Mayors Association’s history that the chief town officials have signed off on – and unanimously at that – a common legislative wish list. And if it bears positive results, Weinbrecht said, it probably won’t be the last time.

Their agenda this year includes the following eight requests.

Keep all local revenues intact through the upcoming budget session.

Maintaining all sources of local revenues is a perpetual concern for town governments. That’s especially important this year, when many local governments, including Cary, are facing shrinking budgets. “They shouldn’t balance their budget on the backs of municipalities across the state,” said Lana Hygh, assistant to the town manager in Cary.

Western Wake County towns have taken their lumps in recent years as state officials have often withheld large sums of money – from taxes on wine and beer, wireless communications sales and utilities franchises – from municipalities.

In the case of wine and beer taxes, for example, the state levies this tax on alcoholic beverages and a municipality may share in the revenues if beer or wine is sold legally within its jurisdiction. The proceeds are distributed based on the town’s population as recorded by the North Carolina Office of State Planning.

Former Gov. Mike Easley withheld $400,000 of this revenue from Cary alone in fiscal year 2002 to help balance the state budget. Gov. Bev Perdue followed suit last year, also withholding hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential revenue from the town.

Exempt lists of citizen e-mail addresses from disclosure under the Public Records Act.

Towns want legislators to make the change in order to keep residents’ e-mail addresses from advertisers who request them en masse from the town’s virtual Rolodex.

Residents often volunteer their e-mail addresses when they sign up for town e-mail blasts about happenings such as public meetings, activities at the senior centers or concerts at public venues. When they sign up, their addresses become public record under North Carolina law.

In recent months, several advertisers have requested Cary’s 13,000-address list. The town was obligated to hand them over, no questions asked. As a result, town officials say, more than 1,000 subscribers to Cary’s mailing lists unsubscribed between December and March.

Critics of the request say that a change in the law would be unnecessary for a number of reasons, including that the town already notifies all subscribers to its e-mail lists that their e-mail addresses are public records. Opponents of the measure say a change also could create an unfair advantage for incumbent candidates during elections. Sitting council members are considered town employees and, therefore, would retain access to the records. Outsiders wouldn’t.

Retain municipal authority for annexation by supporting the N.C. League of Municipalities’ position.

Supporters of involuntary annexation say the law has allowed cities and towns to manage growth and avoid the urban decay that plagues other cities without the ability to annex. Opponents say that property owners chose to live outside a city and that government should not be able to force them to pay new taxes for services they don’t necessarily want.

The League of Municipalities, a nonpartisan association of municipalities in North Carolina, favors the rights of towns to annex land outside their borders. So do elected officials across Wake, who see the procedure as a cost-effective way to manage growth.

The organization last year opposed a state bill on annexations, in part because it would have allowed for a referendum on forced annexation if 15 percent of voters in the municipality and the area to be annexed signed a petition.

“It almost seems silly, though,” Weinbrecht said. “You’re holding a referendum to ask, ‘Do you want to be involuntarily annexed?’ ”

“In that case, their answer is obviously going to be, ‘No,'” he added.

Councilman Don Frantz of Cary, meanwhile, opposes the League’s stance. He was the lone dissenter in a vote last month in which the Cary Town Council joined other governing bodies in Wake in supporting a change in the law. “I would much rather that we grow voluntarily, 100 percent,” Frantz said.

Allow municipalities to order repairs or demolition of dwellings that have been declared unfit for human habitation.

Weinbrecht said his town already has authority to take action against homes that have been vacated or closed for a year. But the mayor said that he and other proponents of the measure want to speed up the process to six months.

“We’re basically just trying to protect property values and the aesthetics of the town,” he said. “There’s nothing worse than having property that is not kept up or maintained or even becomes a danger.”

Weinbrecht acknowledges critics’ argument that a change in the law might come at the expense of low-income families. “Some members of the