Town attorney tells New Canaan commission elected term limits lack clear state authority; flags FOIA, hybrid board challenges

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 understanding ... is that yes, there is authority for appointed” term limits, and many charter-drafters impose limits on appointed commissions rather than on elected offices.

The attorney also advised the commission on public-records compliance. Asked about using a real-time collaborative document for drafting charter language, Bamanti cautioned that a shared live document “is asking for creating a meeting” under FOIA because cross-pollination of ideas in real time could constitute deliberation that must be publicly noticed and recorded. He recommended a process in which individual edits are documented and then considered in a public meeting.

On hybrid boards — panels that combine elected and appointed members — Bamanti said state statutes permit such structures in principle, but practical implementation raises thorny questions about minority representation, voting powers, officer selection and other governance details. He said he and colleagues found few real-world examples and no controlling case law addressing those operational issues: “Absent that completely untested ... there isn't any case law on point.”

Bamanti also described legal differences between the town ‘seal’ and a town ‘logo.’ The statutory definition and custody of a seal (which he said is typically held by the town clerk) is distinct; a logo’s status is less clear. Bamanti suggested options ranging from brief charter language that the seal/logo be limited to official business to leaving granular approval processes to ordinances or policies so they can be updated without reopening the charter.

Commissioners asked follow-up questions about whether other states’ law might be relevant and whether a town should try to define terms like “officer” in a definitions section to reduce ambiguity. Bamanti recommended clearer definitions up front to avoid downstream confusion in the charter.

The commission did not adopt changes at the meeting; Bamanti provided written guidance and said he would follow up with more historical research on the seal and examples of hybrid boards if members wanted additional detail.