Chalk up a history of legislative victories to county unity

By Todd McGee
Communications Director

When the General Assembly included a Medicaid relief plan in its 2007-09 budget last summer, it was a direct result of the active involvement of county commissioners from around the state in the Association’s lobbying efforts. That concerted effort continued a tradition that has lasted nearly eight decades.

When the Association was formed in 1908, commissioners gathered at the annual conference, usually in the summer, and typically voted on a slate of legislative goals. These ideas were typically presented to the General Assembly in written form, and there was very little attempt at organizing counties to support the measures.

Local government representatives from across the state, including Vance County Commissioner Terry Garrison (center), march to the General Assembly Sept. 23, 2002, following a morning rally at the Albert Coates Local Government Center. A strong push from the Association netted counties a local option half-cent sales tax following two consecutive legislative sessions during which the governor and legislators withheld from counties reimbursements and state-shared local taxes. (NCACC file photo by Wil Glenn)

That began to change in the 1930s, however, as the state and the rest of the nation grappled with the Great Depression. Significant changes were coming to county government, and commissioners decided they needed to become active participants to help determine their fate. Improvements in transportation also made it easier on commissioners to travel to Raleigh from throughout the state.

“I was very much impressed with a statement I heard sometime ago,” said Sampson County Chairman J. Silversten during the Association’s 1935 Annual Conference, “that this body of county commissioners can do anything they want to do up there in Raleigh. I want to tell you that is a fact, provided we have cooperation.”

In 1933, attendees at the Association’s Annual Conference voted to sue the state over a recent bill regarding the refunding of tax sale certificates. Delegates from Franklin County believed the law to be unconstitutional and were eager to sue the state – alone or with other counties. After a lengthy discussion, enough counties agreed with Franklin County, and it was decided the Association would take the lead in pursuing the lawsuit on behalf of all counties.

“Even at that early date in the Association’s life, cooperation was beginning to extend to those situations in which not all counties would be involved but in which enough would be involved so as to make concerted and united action seem imperative,” wrote Jerry Elliott in “Call From Craven.” “Such situations would arise more and more in the organization’s future, and not all of them involving lawsuits.”

Many of the Association’s biggest battles have revolved around local-option sales taxes. In 1967, Mecklenburg County succeeded in being granted a local-option one-cent sales tax. Two years later, the General Assembly passed a bill – at the Association’s urging – requiring all 100 counties to put a local-option one-cent sales tax on the November 1969 ballot.

Association Executive Director John Morrisey and Information Director Jerry Elliott swung into high gear, developing a campaign strategies kit for all 100 counties. The duo hit the road and criss-crossed the state. Many pundits predicted that less than 10 counties would pass the sales tax, but when the votes were tabulated after the Nov. 4 election, voters in 25 counties had passed the tax.

The battle wasn’t over, however. In January 1971, the N.C. Supreme Court ruled the tax was unconstitutional. The General Assembly quickly passed new legislation that re-authorized counties to implement the one-cent sales tax, this time either by referendum or via resolution. By the end of the year, all but a handful of counties had instituted the sales tax.

In the early 1980s, the Association led the charge for another one-cent sales tax to be distributed locally. The House passed a bill in 1982, but the Senate refused to act – perhaps because it was an election year.

Undaunted, the Association took up the cause again the next year, after the elections had passed. In April, nearly 300 county officials representing 71 counties attended the Association’s Legislative Day to lobby the General Assembly for the sales tax. In June, after intense lobbying, the House passed a bill for a half-cent local option sales tax.

Knowing that a battle lay ahead with the Senate, Association President Forrest Campbell of Guilford County campaigned across the state for the passage of the sales tax, appearing on radio and television stations throughout North Carolina.

The Senate had its own ideas and voted to enact a one-half cent state sales tax, with the proceeds to be used for school and water and sewer capital needs only. A compromise was eventually reached where the tax would be a local-option sales tax with a portion of the county funds designated for school capital needs, and a portion of the city funds to be designated for water and sewer capital needs.

The local sales tax wasn’t the only issue to come up in 1983. In May 1981, over strenuous opposition from the Association, the General Assembly approved an exclusion to the local property tax base for equipment used to abate air pollution inside buildings. The Association had a bill introduced in March 1983 to repeal the exclusion – something that had never been done before. The bill was eventually passed in the waning days of the session, thanks in part to a concerted effort from counties.

Three years later, with a friendly face in the Governor’s Mansion in the form of former NCACC President Jim Martin of Mecklenburg County, the Association decided to pursue another local-option half-cent sales tax. Gov. Martin quickly endorsed the idea, and on July 3, 1983, the bill was signed into law. Like the 1983 sales tax, a portion of the proceeds of the latest half-cent sales tax were earmarked for local school capital needs.

School capital needs were once again on the minds of county commissioners in 1996, after a study by the Department of Public Instruction showed that counties had more than $5 billion of school facility needs.

As a result, the Association adopted a legislative goal for a statewide school bond, and the General Assembly approved that summer a record $1.8 billion bond, which voters passed that fall.

In 2001, the state was in the midst of a fiscal crisis and was facing a budget deficit of greater than $1 billion. As the General Assembly was debating its 2001-03 biennial budget, members began searching for a way to plug an anticipated gap and decided to end the reimbursements for the repealed inventory tax that were paid annually to cities and counties.

The Association and the League of Municipalities protested vehemently. Several times during the year, county officials descended on Raleigh to beseech their legislators to either leave the reimbursements alone or provide a new revenue source in the form of a half-cent sales tax to counties.

Eventually, the General Assembly granted to counties a half-cent local-option sales tax to make up for the lost reimbursements.

Noted anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”

She most likely wasn’t talking about North Carolina’s county commissioners, but she may as well have been. As has been shown repeatedly throughout the Association’s first century, when county commissioners band together and work toward a common goal, a lot can be accomplished.