The Raleigh News & Observer ran an “unfortunate” article written by Rob Christensen on forced annexation.

The article lets us know right up front where it is coming from.  The article is entitled “Many hail North Carolina annexation law.”

Exactly who hails the law?  There are municipalities, the taxpayer-funded lobbying group the NC League of Municipalities, current and former municipal officials such as David Rusk (he was the former mayor of Albuquerque, New Mexico), Pat McCrory, and some undefined class of business leaders.  I wouldn’t exactly call this group as “many.”

The article rehashes the same tired arguments:

Claim: Forced annexation in NC has helped cities as evidenced by the number of AAA bond rated cities in NC.

Fact: Connecticut and Massachusetts have more AAA bond rated cities than NC–and by the way, there’s no annexation of any kind in those states!

Applying Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s data, six states have more cities with at least one top bond rating than NC.  None of those states are forced annexation states.  Not to mention, there’s no evidence that NC has AAA cities because of forced annexation–the Local Government Commission and its oversight over cities has often been cited as being the key to the financial health of many cities in NC.

Claim: “There is a striking difference between North Carolina and its neighbors to the north and south. Virginia and South Carolina have much more restrictive annexation laws.”

Fact: In the context of the article, this quote appears to be discussing municipal financial health.

First, municipal health isn’t a measure of financial health of a state or financial  health of citizens in the state.  The underlying premise in the article is that the only thing that matters is the health of cities, whatever that cost may be in terms of violating rights.

Second, even by the measures that supporters of forced annexation employ (which are absurd, such as the bond rating data), other states do better than NC or are comparable with NC.

Third, the article relies heavily on Rusk’s research.  He claims that cities in the south and west (sunbelt)  are financially better off (compared to the rustbelt) because they can grow.

Many of those states in these growing regions (with growing cities) don’t have forced annexation though (so much for our special NC annexation law).  Rusk also confuses correlation with causation.  Cities in these areas are growing because people are moving to the warmer states (there has been a mass migration), cost of living is lower, etc.  To see a complete dismantling of David Rusk’s work, see this report by Wendell Cox.

As for Virginia and South Carolina, they may have less growth in their cities than North Carolina.  However, this is in large part due to the way counties and municipalities are structured in those states.  More importantly, the idea that a growing city is ideal presumes that the public is better off living in larger cities.  In fact, smaller governmental units are more responsive to the needs of their residents and are more efficient.