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Like a set of bad parents, the North Carolina General Assembly keeps telling small communities like ours that a bite of chocolate is coming, but instead, it’s really a prune. They talk to us like toddlers in the wild, telling us something is for our own good, but it’s really for their own good.

The latest harmful legislation is House Bill 765. Lawmakers say this bi-partisan legislation will help bring more affordable housing, but hidden inside the candy is a razor that will take away our towns’ authority over zoning, planning, and development decisions. But the real sucker punch in the bill is that if a town votes to deny certain housing developments, it opens them up to lawsuits.

Who’s really behind this nefarious activity? Two extremely powerful lobbying groups, the N.C. Homebuilders Association and the N.C. Realtors Association. They’ve got more jingle jingle jingle in their deep suit pockets than all of us combined.

Our own Rep. Jake Johnson is a co-sponsor of HB 765. The top sponsors make no secret of their loyalties. Three of the four are building contractors or home builders. Even Rep. Johnson has a finger in the real estate pie. He is president and managing broker at Skyfall Properties. 

“Yes,” he told me, “we’re still operating in real estate, and we work with some builders locally to help them out.”

All the sponsors claim their bill is necessary to address the need for affordable housing and to streamline the bureaucratic process. Still, the primary effect would be to limit the local government’s ability to manage growth responsibly.

Let’s just say it like it is. Our towns and counties should always be the ones to decide how housing developments occur or don’t occur. Why? Because we live here. This is our home.

Some towns are speaking out against the proposed legislation: Hendersonville, Flat Rock, Columbus, and others. Johnson told me Wednesday, as the state House was about to resume meeting that he was hopeful the changes we need to that bill would be made. 

The next day, he issued a press release saying he had saved us, which might be a stretch. Time will tell because they haven’t finished making that Raleigh sausage.

It’s possible for a home-grown local official to make his way off to the Capitol in Raleigh and forget where he came from, but Johnson has gotten an earful from his constituents since he embraced this bad legislation.

Larry McDermott is a local retired farmer/journalist. Reach him at hardscrabblehollow@gmail.com