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Town attorney tells New Canaan commission elected term limits lack clear state authority; flags FOIA, hybrid board challenges
Summary
Municipal attorney Nicholas Bamanti told the Charter Revision Commission that Connecticut law provides no settled authority for term limits on local elected offices, warned against real-time collaborative cloud documents under FOIA, and outlined legal uncertainty around hybrid elected/appointed boards and the town seal/logo.
Nicholas Bamanti, a municipal attorney with the firm Birch and Moses, told the New Canaan Charter Revision Commission on Feb. 17 that Connecticut state law does not clearly authorize town charters to impose term limits on local elected offices and that the legality of any such limits would be legally risky if challenged. “Are term limits possible for elected local elected positions? ... the answer really is no,” Bamanti said.
Bamanti said a small number of charters across the state include term limits but that those examples have not been squarely tested in court and therefore carry legal uncertainty. He told commissioners that appointed positions are a different matter: “my baseline…
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