State House committee kills annexation bills
Legislation filed in response to the city’s use of the expanded enclave statute in the state annexation code died in committee Wednesday, the bill’s sponsor said.
State Rep. Bruce Cozart, R-District 24, of Hot Springs, said House Bill 1018 failed on a voice vote, with seven of the 10 House City, County and Local Affairs Committee members who were present voting against it. A bill needs 11 votes to advance to the House floor.
The bill would have required a special election of city residents and residents in the affected area to annex an enclave, the same process prescribed for annexing areas contiguous to corporate limits. Cozart amended the bill last month to allow a city’s governing body to annex enclaves comprising fewer than 40 acres.
“It was voted down in committee, as we knew it would be,” Cozart said. “The mayors and the Municipal League have a lot bigger voice on that committee than people in the county. We didn’t have the votes. I don’t have the support of that committee. I won’t run it again, because it would get the same result.”
Hot Springs has adopted four annexation ordinances for Lake Hamilton-adjacent lands under the authority of Act 109 since December 2015. Cozart voted for the bill that became Act 109 during the 2015 regular legislative session, joining 88 other House members in expanding the enclave statute to include lands contiguous to corporate limits on three sides and a lake or a river on a fourth.
Enclaves are areas surrounded by corporate limits that a city’s governing body can annex by majority vote. Cozart told a special-called meeting of the Garland County Quorum Court in November that he would introduce HB 1018 to atone for his vote on Act 109.
Cozart said House Bill 1335 suffered the same
fate Wednesday. It would have allowed a majority of registered voters in a recently annexed area to petition the annexing municipality for a detachment ordinance within one year from the date of annexation.
Only the Twin Points and Burchwood Bay road areas the city annexed in December 2015 are currently part of the corporate limits. The Lake Hamilton Drive, Lakeland Drive and Buena Vista Road area annexed in January 2016 and scheduled to come under city authority last April is the subject of three lawsuits dismissed at the circuit court level. Two are on appeal and one has a pending motion asking Division 1 Circuit Court Judge John Homer Wright to further explain why he dismissed the case last month.
Annexation opponents gathered enough signatures in support of referendum petitions to force the Hot Springs Board of Directors to schedule a special election on the ordinances annexing enclave study areas C and D. The latter is the area between Weston Road and Lake Hamilton, and the former is the Grand Point Drive and Bayshore Drive area east of the Hot Springs Creek Basin of Lake Hamilton.