House rejects bill requiring county permission before cities can annex land

TOPEKA — The House of Representatives on Wednesday shot down a bill that would have required cities to get county permission to annex new lands.

On a vote of 65-57, representatives rejected House Bill 2165, which would have essentially ended the practice of cities unilaterally bringing newly developed and growth areas into their boundaries.

The bill would have required a majority vote of the county commission before most annexations could be finalized. Under current law, cities can generally annex lands adjacent to their boundaries without the property owners’ permission, unless the parcels are 20 acres or more.

Annexation has been a particularly tense issue in northern Sedgwick County. Residents there have complained that being dragged into cities has brought them more taxes and regulation without a corresponding improvement in public services.

Under current state law, the city annexing residents has to make and fulfill a plan for extending services to the newly acquired territory. If the commission rules the city hasn’t met its responsibilities, the city gets 2½ years to correct the issues. After that, residents can petition to de-annex themselves.

In the past couple of months, residents of Valley Center and Maize brought complaints to the Sedgwick County Commission, seeking to sever themselves from the cities to which they’d been annexed 7½ years before.

The majority of commissioners decided that while the service plans were inadequate in some cases, the cities had fulfilled the plans and they had no legal grounds to de-annex the complaining residents.

The annexation provisions of HB 2165 would have brought county commissioners in at the start of annexation, rather than five years after the fact.

They would have had to give their consent to an annexation within 30 days of the city holding annexation hearings or the annexation wouldn’t go forward.

That provision wasn’t voted on by either chamber of the Legislature this session, but was added to a bundle of less controversial bills in a House/Senate conference committee.

Rep. Steve Huebert, R-Valley Center, carried the measure on the floor and pleaded for an up-or-down vote because it had already been sent back to the conference committee once.

“If you live in the big counties, you’ve seen the impact,” Huebert said. “In my district, the abuses have been terrible … and when those abuses take place, you’re cleaning up a mess you shouldn’t have to clean up.”

He said residents in developing areas need the additional protection that county oversight would bring.

“This whole issue is the proverbial wolf and chicken sitting down to decide what’s for lunch, and all we’re doing is letting the sheepdog come in and be a part of the discussion,” he said.

But Rep. Blaine Finch, R-Ottawa and a lawyer, said all the bill would do is complicate matters for cities, counties and residents, and “ensure that local government attorneys will make more money.”

He said he couldn’t support the provision unless it included specific guidelines that commissioners would have to follow to reject an annexation.

House-Senate politics also weighed in the decision.

Finch and others objected to senators inserting the annexation provision in the bill without it going through the regular process.

And even after the House sent the bill back to the committee to have conferees remove or change the annexation provision, “the Senate negotiators did nothing,” Finch said.

“They thumbed their nose at the majority of the members of this body,” he said. “I ask you to stand strong as a body … and send a strong message that we will not be moved, we will not be bluffed out of our position and we will not be dictated to as though we’re some kind of junior members of the legislative process.”

This story was originally published May 6, 2015 at 3:49 PM with the headline "House rejects bill requiring county permission before cities can annex land."