CALL TO ACTION! – March 27th, 2017
We need your help! We want to strongly urge you to TAKE ACTION in support of Texas Senate Bill 715 – Relating to municipal annexation (a.k.a., the Texas Annexation Reform Act), by writing to your State Senator TODAY! The bill is currently in the Senate Committee on Intergovernmental Relations.
As you know by now, the City of Athens has a bullet item in their 2017 Strategic Map stating, “Develop and implement an Annexation Plan focused on a) Lake Athens ETJ b) Primary Corridors and Loop 7”. Just what the City planners actually intend by this statement is still being debated. We are continuing to talk with them and hope to have position papers from both incumbent Mayor, Jerry Don Vaught, and Mayoral Candidate, Monte Montgomery, to send to you in the near future.
However, putting aside the local issue of the City of Athens and Lake Athens and focusing more on the statewide issue, current Texas law allows home rule cities to involuntarily annex territory within their Extraterritorial Jurisdiction (ETJ – “the legal ability of a government to exercise authority beyond its normal boundaries.” – Wikipedia). Texas is one of the few states that still allows this undemocratic process. Texas Senate Bill 715 is offered to reform the laws relating to annexation. This is from the press release announcing that State Senator Donna Campbell filed SB 715:
“Key provisions of SB 715 include:
- Ends involuntary annexation so that residents living in the Extraterritorial Jurisdiction of a city have a greater say in the annexation process.
- Requires consent of the majority of property owners – by petition if the population is under 200 or by an election if the population is over 200 – in order for a city or municipality to have the authority to annex the area.
- Streamlines the voluntary annexation process to a matter of weeks when owners and municipalities can agree in writing on the provision of services.
- Repeals limited purpose annexation, whereby regulations are imposed on residents of the ETJ without representation and without receiving any city services.”
Below is a sample email that you can use as a guide to write your own email to your State Senator. State Senator Robert Nichols is the Senator for District 3 that includes Henderson County; go to this website to send him an email: http://tinyurl.com/mrf2cu3. If you are not a full-time Lake Athens resident, we encourage you to also write to your own State Senator. To determine who that is, go to the “Who Represents Me?” page: http://www.fyi.legis.texas.gov/Home.aspx. Finally, the State Senators who make up the Senate Committee on Intergovernmental Relations should be contacted as well. They are: Sen. Eddie Lucio, Jr., Sen. Paul Bettencourt, Sen. Donna Campbell, Sen. Sylvia Garcia, Sen. Don Huffines, Sen. José Menéndez, and Sen. Van Taylor.
The 85th Legislative Session ends May 29th, 2017 and if the bill isn’t passed by then, it dies. The 86th Legislative Session doesn’t begin until Jan 8th, 2019. SO PLEASE, write to your State Senator and the Senators on the Intergovernmental Relations Committee TODAY!
Also, here is a site from “Empower Texans” where you can sign a petition against involuntary annexation: https://empowertexans.com/under-the-dome/legislative-priority-municipal-annexation-reform/.
If you want to learn more about Annexation Reform in Texas, here are a couple of resources. You can also just Google “Texas Annexation Reform”.
- http://www.texaspolicy.com/library/doclib/Ending-Forced-Annexation-in-Texas.pdf
- https://www.tribtalk.org/2016/03/31/involuntary-annexation-wrong-for-texas/
Sincerely,
Your LAPOA Board of Directors
**SAMPLE EMAIL**
Dear Senator __________,
I am writing to you today to ask you to strongly support Senate Bill 715 – Relating to municipal annexation (a.k.a., the Texas Annexation Reform Act), filed by Senator Donna Campbell and joint authored by Senators Birdwell, Bettencourt, Creighton, Schwertner, and Buckingham. As I understand it, SB 715 is currently in the Senate Intergovernmental Relations Committee.
I want to express to you as strongly as possible my opposition to the involuntary annexation of territory by home rule cities. As stated by James Quintero on TribTalk.org in the March 31, 2016 article titled, ‘Involuntary annexation wrong for Texas’, “…the current annexation process is undemocratic and has no place in Texas, a state that prides itself on limited government and self-determination. Change is sorely needed.” As I understand it, SB 715 would require cities desiring to annex territory within their extraterritorial jurisdiction to gain approval from a majority of the citizens within the territory to be annexed.
Senator __________, please do everything you can to advance SB 715 and support it through to passage! It is the right thing to do.
Sincerely,