The Tennessee Attorney General issued an opinion yesterday stating that there is an “irreconcilable conflict” between statutes involving the authority to provide water and wastewater service in territory annexed by a city. Tenn. Code Ann. §5-6-120 provides in part that “From and after the creation of a water and wastewater treatment authority and the establishment of its service area, the authority shall
be the sole and exclusive provider of its authorized services in its service area. . . .” and that “[a]ny city proposing to provide such services in the service area of the authority shall have authorization to do so only by filing a petition in the manner established by this section and receiving a cession by the authority.”
However, Tenn. Code Ann. § 6-51-111 states that an “annexing municipality, if and to the extent that it may choose, shall have the exclusive right to perform or provide municipal and utility functions and services in any territory that it annexes,” notwithstanding any other statute. In short, one statute, §6-51-111, gives the annexing city exclusive authority to provide these services, while the other statute, § 5-6-120, gives the existing utility such exclusive authority.
Under the of statutory interpretation, there is a presumption that the legislature knows the law when it enacts new legislation. So when two separate acts conflict and that they cannot be reconciled, a court should find that the later act passed or amended repeals the first—at least to the extent of any conflict. In this situation, the AG determined that because TCA 6-51-111 was amended more recently (in 2003), it supersedes and controls over TCA 5-6-120 (last amended in 1995), and therefore an annexing city has the exclusive right to provide utility services in that territory.
A good summary of rules of statutory interpretation is available from Georgetown Law School at this link.
