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CITY OF BARLING v. FORT CHAFFEE REDEVELOPMENT12/6/2001
ng in part; dissenting in part.
I concur with the result reached by the majority because the City of Barling's attempted annexations of property in Fort Chaffee were void ad initio. FCRA raised the issue of whether Barling had the power to annex a large portion of Fort Chaffee while it was still a federal enclave. If it did not, then the annexations were void ab initio. The majority holds, as did the trial court below, that the federal government permits a city to annex a portion of a federal enclave. However, the court asked and answered the wrong question. The issue here is whether Arkansas law empowered Barling to annex a portion of a federal enclave, not whether the federal government permitted it. The majority's decision today, which upholds Barling's annexation of almost 14,000 acres in the Fort Chaffee federal enclave, opens the door for municipal land grabs of property ceded to the federal government.
Three United States Supreme Court cases frame the issue of the type of power that a state and its political subdivisions may exercise over a federal enclave. In Arlington Hotel Co. v. Fant, 278 U.S. 439 (1929) (Fant III), the Supreme Court upheld our holding in Arlington Hotel Co. v. Fant, 176 Ark. 613, 4 S.W.2d 7 (1928) (Fant II), that when Arkansas cedes exclusive jurisdiction over to the federal government, it takes "away the authority of the State Government to legislate over the territory ceded to the General Government." Id. at 615 (quoting Fant v. Arlington Hotel Co., 170 Ark. 440, 280 S.W. 20 (1926) (Fant I)). This court also held that the state retained jurisdiction over transient matters (such as civil claims), but not over local matters (such as property), and that the federal enclave continued to be subject to laws in effect at the time the state ceded authority to the federal government. Fant II, supra. The next opinion by the Supreme Court on this issue came in 1953. In Howard v. Commissioners of Sinking Fund of City of Louisville, 344 U.S. 624 (1953), the Court held that a federal enclave was not a state within a state, and that the federal government was not concerned with where a city might draw its boundaries; rather the issue was whether a city's attempt to exercise authority over the property created friction between the city and the federal government. The third case on point is Paul v. United States, 371 U.S. 245 (1963). The Paul Court cites Fant III with favor for the proposition that " State may not legislate with respect to a federal enclave unless it reserved the right to do so when it gave its consent to the purchase by the United States. . . ." Id. at 268. The Paul Court did temper the Fant III view by concluding that regulatory changes that are consistent with state law, as it existed at the time of the cession, are applicable within a federal enclave. Id.
Reading the three cases harmoniously, it is clear that while the federal government does not object to a city annexing a portion of a federal enclave so long as it does not create friction, the power to annex the property is a question of state law, i.e. whether the State reserved that power to itself when it ceded jurisdiction to the federal government. The majority concludes that because the State and its municipal subdivisions had the power to annex property at the time the State ceded jurisdiction, cities continued to have that power. This court and the United States Supreme Court agree that laws in existence at the time of cession continue to be in effect on the federal enclave so long as they are not inconsistent with federal laws and purpose. See Fant, Fant II, and Fant III, supra. This same proposition was affirmed by the Supreme Court in Howard, supra. Ten years later in Paul, the Supreme Court
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