Summer study – where no bill sponsor wants their proposed legislation to end up. That, however, is exactly where state Rep. Mike Carter and state Sen. Bo Watson’s de-annexation efforts will be parked for the next few months.
For a couple weeks during the 2016 legislative session, it didn’t look like that would be the case. The bill, which would have given Tennesseans in areas annexed by cities since 1998 the chance to vote for de-annexation, sailed through the House before fizzling in the Senate.
Once it stalled, Watson, the bill’s senate champion, promised to bring it back up again. “This isn’t an issue that goes away,” he vowed.
The de-annexation crusade was the natural extension of Carter and Watson’s successful 2014 annexation reform law. That legislation stripped Tennessee municipalities of the ability to annex areas by ordinance. In other words, cities and towns can no longer absorb new lands without the approval of the people living on them. Future annexation is still permitted, but only if affected residents OK it by way of “mutual consent” or a public vote.
As Carter told me via email, “This (2016) bill was an attempt to finish the work we started in the original (2014) annexation bill” by letting people whose voices were never heard in recent land grabs have a “one shot” chance to hold a referendum on the issue.