After the dust settled on the North Carolina General Assembly 2012 Short Session, 203 bills had become law, a handful of which survived gubernatorial veto. Although the General Assembly did not pass land use reforms as dramatic as it had in the 2011 Long Session, it continued its practice of reforming annexation and regulation, and several bills touched on land use and land development.

Regulatory reform -

One of the more comprehensive bills of the 2012 Short Session was Senate Bill 810 / Session Law 2012-187 “Regulatory Reform Act of 2012.” Although many of the changes it introduced relate to administrative procedure, it did make a handful of changes that may be worthy of note to those involved in real estate development in this State:

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources is required to track and report on the time required to process permit applications under the One-Stop for Certain Environmental Permits Programs and Express Permit and Certification Reviews. The hope is that this may lead to improvements in processing times for environmental permits. It also allows a Port Enhancement Zone to include partial census tracts – these zones formerly could only include entire census tracts.