WHAT HAPPENED: It's been a fast week, with a near-the-end-of-session vibe. State budget negotiations continue in private while committees and floor calendars reflect substantive bills moving (including one we'll bring to your direct attention with an action alert in this Bulletin; it deals with preemption on vacation rentals and is of high interest to cities and towns).
WHAT IT MEANS: We might indeed be in the last miles of the 2019 session, in terms of known business, but we still don't have a sure landing date on the budget. This week, Republican budget writers and Democratic leaders from the General Assembly brought negotiations to Gov. Roy Cooper in a meeting that
didn't create agreement. Medicaid expansion, which the governor supports, was one area of misalignment with the majority party.
ON TAP: Local-level leaders have tight eyes on the proceedings, as the respective
House and
Senate budget proposals included a number of positives for communities, from a much-needed increase in Powell Bill funding to other infrastructure support to disaster recovery aid to revitalization funds. The new fiscal year begins July 1, and if a budget isn't in place by then, the legislature will have to pass one or more continuing resolutions to extend existing funding levels until a new plan arrives. Meanwhile, the chambers have lots of bills
calendared for attention starting Monday.
THE SKINNY: Amid budget talks, other important bills are moving. This week we bring you focuses on land-use, affordable housing, police recordings, building-code regulatory reform and, of immediate importance, short-term rentals. Read on.
League staff expects language that would preempt local regulation of short-term home rentals, such as Airbnb, to be inserted into an existing bill to be considered by the
House Rules Committee on Monday. Proponents are likely to insert the language in
SB 483 Vacation Rental Act Changes, which is scheduled to be heard by the committee Monday afternoon, should the measure go forward.
Please contact your legislators this weekend and urge them to oppose any attempt at local preemption of short-term rental regulations. Let them know that cities and towns that have or may adopt local ordinances regulating short-term rentals are doing so to protect surrounding property owners.
As Airbnb and other short-term rentals have grown in recent years in areas with heavy demand, a lack of local regulation means that owners can turn second homes into de facto hotels within residential neighborhoods, making weekly or other shorter-term rentals throughout the year. Neighboring homeowners can see the value of their homes decrease as public safety and quality of life issues arise.
Meanwhile, a last-minute attempt to insert this language into an existing bill means that it could become law within days with very little opportunity for public input.
With that in mind, let your legislators know:
-Using homes as continuous, year-round, short-term rentals can lower neighboring property values. Local regulations can and do address noise, parking and other factors that can harm public safety and quality of life.
-By continuously using homes as short-term rentals, owners are using them more like commercial hotels. Local regulation ensures that they comply with minimum housing codes.
-Local regulation ensures that cities know the location of short-term rentals so that occupancy taxes are properly collected. Creating gaps in those collections will mean decreased dollars for tourism promotion and other needs, as well as damage commercial hotels that are required to collect them.
Please contact your legislators this weekend and urge them to oppose any attempts to preempt local authority regulating short-term rentals. Let them know that by doing so they will be helping protect the most important investment most people will ever make, their home. From pothole-fixing to the rollout of slick new vehicles that drive themselves, modern transportation elements make for interesting conversation at the very least. But the challenges upon policy writers, and the responsibilities of local-level leaders to support our changing ways of getting around, are often missed or lacking detail in public discussion. "While more fuel efficient and electric vehicles will mean less pollution for our environment, those changes will also mean less gasoline purchased, and right now, how we maintain our roads is directly tied to the taxes collected per gallon of gas purchased," League President William Pitt, a member of the Washington City Council, said in
a piece published this week by WRAL TechWire. "One aspect of that maintenance that many people are not aware of is just how much that responsibility falls on local city and town governments."
Pitt in the TechWire piece noted that North Carolina has one of the biggest state-supported road systems in the United States. But city and town governments are no slouches in the number of road miles they, themselves, maintain in their borders, he emphasized. "In my city of Washington, we maintain 59 miles of city streets; in the City of Sanford, the total is 130 miles; the City of Raleigh maintains 1,100 miles of city streets," said Pitt.
The N.C. Department of Transportation's annual transportation budget is about $4.7 billion. Municipalities here spent an estimated $1.8 billion on transportation in 2018. "While the state does pass on a portion of its collected fuel taxes to cities and towns, that money – often referred to as Powell Bill funds – is about $147 million, or about 9 percent of total municipal spending on transportation," Pitt said, adding that the League has worked to persuade the legislature to boost that amount, which has remained flat for years. Pitt offers more context and detail in the
full piece on TechWire as he points to municipalities' commitment to transportation thought leadership.
The League has released its most recent Quarterly Revenue Report, available in an interactive web format, as well as PDF. Both are housed on the League’s website. The latest report examines state-collected local revenues received by local governments for the third quarter of the 2018-2019 fiscal year. These reports provide a snapshot of quarterly trends in state-collected local revenues and supplement the League’s Annual Revenue Projection, released in March. If you have any questions regarding the Revenue Reports or Revenue Projections, questions can be directed to Chris Nida or Caitlin Saunders.
