Special Assessments for Infrastructure – HB 1770

I have gotten several inquiries about House Bill 1770  of the 2007 Regular Session (passed by the General Assembly and pending action by the Governor) which authorizes cities and counties to make assessments for infrastructure.

This started as a Senate Bill 2156, a local bill for Cabarrus County (not including any municipal authority)
The introduced version of Senate Bill 2156 was much more complicated. It was modeled after South Carolina’s County Public Works Improvement Act, passed in 1993.

The Senate Finance Committee adopted a committee substitute for the bill that made it apply to four counties, greatly simplified it, changed the purposes, and added municipalities in those four counties. 

The project then got transferred to House Bill 1770 for procedural reasons. It was made into a statewide bill, with the only substantive change being the addition of public transportation as an assessment purpose.

Here is the bill summary prepared by committee staff, edited to reflect final action:

Impact fee compendium

In addition to the Occupancy tax compendium posted earlier today, our Research Division has also put together a compendium of local acts relating to development impact fees (current as of the end of the 2005 legislative session) research by a legislative intern in 2005 showed that between 1985 and 1991, 22 cities and three counties were authorized to levy development impact fees, but none were enacted between then and 2005. (some were amended later)

CAVEAT: We are not sure whether the table has been updated to include later amendments to a listed local act. On our list of things to do for next year is to Shepardize the table to update it.