Town Violates a State Statute, Is there any recourse?

Factual Questions
21

My point about starving the beast is/was that the OP says the appeals process is backlogged by 11 months. That indicates the demand for appeals exceeds the supply. Why are appeals in short supply? Because the entity which funds the appeals process has not allocated enough resources to meet the demand.

Which opens the door for the localities to wilfully refuse to comply with the law, knowing that effective enforcement from above will not be coming any time soon, if ever. In other words, it gives the localities the freedom to be corrupt. It would be interesting to test to see whether a bribe to an uncooperative issuing authority did the trick.

I was NOT asserting that the shortage of appeals procesing in CT is directly a result of a political doctrine of “starve the beast.” I don’t know whether it’s due to that, a simple lack of funds, or just plain bureaucratic mistake on the part of the folks who make up the state’s budget. Or them being surprised that the towns are not cooperating which triggers massive numbers of appeals for that unexpected issue.

What I was asserting is that IF we soon see a lot more constrained budgets at state & local level, without corresponding changes in the law to reduce the services supplied & demanded, THEN we will see lots more situations like the OP finds: non-compliance or non-performance by various government functions with no practical recourse by the citizenry.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re bitching about pot holes not being fixed or agencies refusing to issue gun permits. When there’s nobody to effectively complain to to fix the problem, a lot of frustration & anger will be the only real result.

22

Surprised that no one has mentioned HB-45 in Florida covering this exact issue.

In a nutshell…

-------------------------Cut and paste from various cites with my own notes

In 1987 the Florida Legislature passed the Firearms Preemption law to provide uniformity of gun laws.

It was intended to stop local governments from making criminals out of law-abiding citizens simply because they crossed a city or county line. It was intended to provide uniform gun laws so that no matter where in the state you live and no matter where in the state you travel, the same gun laws apply.

Unfortunately, the law contains no penalties because no one ever imagined that local elected officials and government workers would willfully and knowingly violate state law.

In 2000, the City of South Miami was one of the cities that NRA lawyers wrote concerning a proposed ordinance that violated state law.

The City’s external counsel confirmed that it was a violation, but also noted that there were no penalties. We were informed that Commissioners were told that without penalties, they could do what they wanted to do. Further, that an illegal ordinance would stand until the City was sued and a court declared the ordinance void.

Finally enough voters made enough noise that the legislators passed HB 45 giving the 24 year old preemption legislation some teeth.

With HB 45, city officials who willfully and knowingly violate the preemption will be personally liable with a fine up to $5,000. A violation also would be grounds for termination or removal from office by the governor. No public funds could be used to defend or reimburse the person for violating the preemption.

A local regulation that violates the state’s preemption will be ruled invalid, and a government could be liable for actual damages up to $100,000 and for a plaintiff’s attorney fees.

I suspect the OP and CT are in a similar situation and will require a similar solution for a permanent fix. Until then individuals are pretty much limited to waiting on the appeals procedure or spending time and money in the courts to maybe get heard sooner.

While the appeals are backed up 11 months, my understanding is that the original applications are collecting dust because no one is particularly interested in processing them and there’s no real penalty for not doing so.

23

I’m not being glib about this, but isn’t this exactly why states have attorney’s general? If a local government is violating state law, it seems to me the state attorney general’s office should be consulted and an investigation should take place.

24

The operative word being “should”. All state AGs have more work than they can handle. So some cases are simply going to be ignored for lack of resources.

As between catching bad guys & winning adoring headlines for “doing something about crime”, versus starting a pissing contest with some local city officials, it’s pretty clear which way the state AG’s office is going to lean.

And as explained by Projammer, a law which has no penalties for non-compliance is a law which everyone can ignore with complete impunity. There is nothing the state AG could do even after a thorough investigation. Proving you violated a penalty-free law means the penalty is … nothing.

25

There is a case here in Nebraska that was just concluded dealing with this issue. The City of Omaha has a city ordinance requiring that all handguns be registered * with the Police Dept. The State of Nebraska does not require this.

A resident alien (legal in all ways) attempted to purchase a handgun and register it with the city. The City ordinance did not allow non-citizens to legally register a handgun. The State of Nebraska does not require that handgun owners be U.S. citizens. Two organizations brought suit against the City to force them to comply with State law in this matter.

The City Council voted 5-2 in favor of revising the City ordinance.

  • Handguns purchased by those holding a state concealed handgun permit are exempt from this requirement to register, but that was another legal issue.