Court Finds Sanitary District Conditions on Sewer Connection Constitutional
An Illinois Appellate Court recently issued a ruling in favor of a Sanitary District, the City of Champaign, and other government bodies in a challenge to invalidate an intergovernmental agreement and other ordinances that affected the development of the plaintiff's property. I-57 & Curtis, LLC v. Urbana & Champaign Sanitary District.
The challenged IGA and ordinances allowed the plaintiff to annex its property to the Sanitary District (and connect to the Sanitary District's sewer system) only if the plaintiff entered into an annexation agreement with the City of Champaign to annex the property to the City. The plaintiff objected to that condition, claiming it did not want to annex to the City because it would subject the property to the City's zoning jurisdiction. So, the plaintiff sued the various government defendants to invalidate the IGA and ordinances, claiming that the plaintiff was deprived of its valuable property interest without due process of law. The lawsuit also challenged the authority of the defendants to enter into the IGA. Finally, plaintiff claimed that the "coerced annexation" violated plaintiff's constitutional right to freely and voluntarily choose whether and how to participate in the electoral process of municipal annexation.
The circuit court ruled in favor of the defendants. On appeal, the Appellate Court upheld the ruling in favor of defendants, rejecting plaintiff's challenge to the IGA and ordinances. First, the Appellate Court held that the Sanitary District had the authority to enter into the IGA and impose conditions on the connection to the District's sewer system. Second, the Appellate Court rejected plaintiff's argument that the condition imposed by the District requiring annexation circumvented the procedures contained in the annexation statute for forced annexations, finding the condition to be "leverage" to further annexation rather than a forced annexation. The Court also rejected plaintiff's due process argument, finding no entitlement under Illinois law to subdivision approval. In short, the Appellate Court rejected plaintiff's challenge to the constitutionality of the IGA and its conditions on annexation.
0 comments:
Post a Comment