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CITY OF BARLING v. FORT CHAFFEE REDEVELOPMENT12/6/2001
n ordinances were time-barred. As noted above, the trial court granted Barling's first motion for summary judgment, concluding FCRA's challenge to Barling's 1981, 1982, and 1991 annexation ordinances and elections were untimely filed, since § 14-40-304 requires that challenges to annexations must be filed within 30 days of the election.
FCRA asserts that it properly and timely challenged Barling's annexation elections because the ordinances calling for those elections were void ab initio. Particularly, FCRA argues that Barling did not have jurisdiction to acquire the federal military land, because only those laws in effect in 1941, when Arkansas ceded jurisdiction over the land to the federal government, could govern subsequent actions affecting that land. In support of its argument, FCRA cites Arlington Hotel Co. v. Fant, 278 U.S. 439 (1929). There, in 1904, the United States acquired exclusive jurisdiction over Hot Springs Park, and in 1913, the General Assembly enacted a law relieving innkeepers from liability to guests for loss by fire unless it was due to negligence. The plaintiffs contended the Arkansas law had no force in Hot Springs Park, which included the Arlington Hotel where the plaintiffs sustained a fire loss. The Supreme Court agreed and held that when the United States bought or condemned state land for a "national purpose," without consent of the state, then "such jurisdiction would attach as was needed to enable the United States to use it for the purpose for which it had been purchased." However, when the state formally ceded jurisdiction to the federal government, "the state and the government of the United States could frame the cession and acceptance of governmental jurisdiction, so as to divide the jurisdiction between the two as the two
parties might determine, provided only they saved enough jurisdiction for the United States to enable it to carry out the purpose of the acquisition of jurisdiction." Fant, 278 U.S. at 451. FCRA submits that the Fant holding applies to the instant case, because when Arkansas ceded jurisdiction over Fort Chaffee to the federal government in 1942, there was no authority left for the state to grant to a municipal subdivision, such as Barling, for that subdivision to exercise or assume.
The trial court here rejected FCRA's argument, finding instead that the present situation was controlled by Howard v. Commissioners of Sinking Fund of the City of Louisville, 344 U.S. 624 (1953). We agree. In that case, the City of Louisville, Kentucky, in 1947 and 1950, annexed a piece of land which the federal government had acquired in 1940, with the consent of the State of Kentucky, to construct a Naval Ordnance Plant. Louisville then began collecting a license tax on residents of that annexed area. Several employees of the ordnance plant filed suit, alleging that the plant was not within the city, since Louisville could not properly have annexed federal property, and as such, the city had no right to tax them. The Supreme Court noted as follows:
The appellants first contend that the City could not annex this federal area because it had ceased to be a part of Kentucky when the United States assumed exclusive jurisdiction over it. With this
we do not agree. When the United States, with the consent of Kentucky, acquired the property upon which the Ordnance Plant is located, the property did not cease to be a part of Kentucky. The geographical structure of Kentucky remained the same. In rearranging the structural divisions of the Commonwealth, in accordance with state law, the area became a part of the City of Louisville, just as it remained a part of the County of Jefferson and the Commonwealth of Kentucky. A state may conform
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