The Supreme Court splitting the baby.

I think trying to conjecture on what a court may do is not a game that I will participate on.

So let me clarify, let me address the repeated use of the word implicit.

Once again, and perhaps what I said earlier was not heard completely.

Expressly forbids the act of implicitly assuming that a statue means something other than what is specifically in the statute.

Imagine the chaos if everyone interpreted the statute what they thought it implicitly said, not what it said.

That's why the plain language statute exists.

So we should uh dispose ourselves of that implicit assumption of what the statute means or what it says.

Thomas made the comment that there is express language in the bill that the legislature did not have time to take that explicitly prohibits ordinances trying to do.

It would be helpful if Attorney Thomas could provide that express language that was in the uh bill that the state legislature didn't have the time uh also in the municipal powers act, which attorney Thomas referred to, it explicitly grants the legislative body of the municipality to enact ordinances.

I believe if my memory serves me correctly is a numeral ten of the powers granted to the municipality, but I haven't had the time to bring the powers act on the computer, so I'm going by sheer memory.

But you can read the act, you can look at it at your leisure, and you see that the municipality is expressly empowered.

The legislature, not the mayor, the legislature.

For example, referring to the many ordinances that Representative Sherwood animals are zoning regulations themselves, have regulations that address animals and how much acreage and where they can be kept, etc.

etc.

etc.

So even our zoning regulations work in that field.

The appellate court, again, one can stop conjecturing at what a court might do, because it changes from level to level.

So I believe we have that we should have complete confidence, and if we get sued, and by the way, let me address the point that sensitive that Chair Burns broke, the politics of this matter.

Maybe the lawyer in this farm, whatever thing that Attorney Thomas spoke with feels one way, but when you consider the politics of this, the mayor, I mean the governor, the attorney general, finding themselves in a position to defend poppy mills, that is not going to happen.

And I believe our mayor will also see that defending poppy mills is probably not the proper politics or optics.

So I I'm quite confident that we can pursue this um prevail.

Uh thank you on our yield.

Okay, uh Representative Cloth Rally on the floor.

Thank you.

Um so earlier in the evening, Representative Sherwood alluded to um Hartford passing a tree ordinance and some sort of litigation ensuing after that, um, which then allowed us as a municipality pave the way for us to be able to also have a tree ordinance was making parallels between that and us paving the way when it came to puppy mills.

Can you clarify what you said?

Can you just restate that?

Because I just want to make sure I understand uh correctly um what the goals are with this, if you could, representative Sherwood, President Sherwood.

Uh sure.

So um the state of Connecticut has extensive state statutes that regulate trees um and regulate that municipalities have to have tree wardens, they have to have public hearings on public trees that get cut.

There are there is pages and pages of state statute um with how municipalities deal with trees.

And for a long time um municipalities in the state of Connecticut, going back 50, 60 years ago, wanted to further regulate trees, but the same arguments were being made that um oh, you know, uh the state has already uh put forward a bunch of regulations on trees and they don't allow uh municipalities to regulate trees.

And um I have to go back and look at what year the Hartford ordinance was enacted.

Uh I don't have that in front of me, but I can certainly get it.

But a number of decades ago, the city of Hartford said, you know what, we think that this is so important, we're gonna go ahead and regulate trees.

Um uh beyond what the state prescribes.

And if the state or any entity wants to sue us, they can.

And the Hartford Tree Ordinance has been held up in court over and over again, and it does not violate state statute, and it is because of their bravery that other municipalities in the state of Connecticut, including the city of Stanford, currently, are able to freely have the confidence to enact ordinance that ordinances that further regulate trees.

So, unless some brave municipality decides to move forward and regulate the sale of dogs and cats to find out if in fact the judge is going to say that this is legal or it's not legal, um, we're gonna be at a standstill.

And if Hartford didn't take that step some two, three decades ago, uh the city of Stanford wouldn't be we wouldn't have passed what we just passed tonight in this committee.

And so that is my point that no one's willing to do this, and it should be us because it's the right thing to do, because the state is not the state is not getting it done for whatever reason.

They have midnight deadlines and they pass it through committee, and somebody doesn't think it's important enough to put the bill at the head of the line so that it can pass.

And so that's that's why we need to do this, and that's why I'm I pushed to bring it up this evening.

Okay, thank you.

Um, and then my next question through you, Attorney Burns, uh, to Attorney Telma.

So previously, an attorney from the Department of Agriculture, if I'm understanding correctly, called up the legal department of the city of Stanford and basically said, if you pass this ordinance, we will sue you.

Is that the extent of it?

Yes.

Okay.

Now, the Department of Agriculture as an entity, are they more of an independent agency, or they more do they the way they operate, do they operate more independently, or do they operate more in a political manner under the direction of the governor?

I couldn't tell you.

I I don't know the internal behind the scenes workings of the uh state departments.

Um I'm sorry, I can't I can I can't give you any um elucidation on that question.

Okay, I guess I'm just trying to wonder.

Okay, I guess I'm just trying to wonder I I understand the politics of the situation that are being described that we want to make noise about this in order to promote Hartford to act, but the Department of Agriculture simply may be acting not so much in a political manner as a manner of uh procedural manner, and I guess I'm trying to understand if this is just gonna get shut down really fast procedurally.

If this attorney tell me if this is going to be kind of like an open shut case, um would that it sounds like there is a chance that this could just be an open shut case?

You pass this ordinance, you get sued, and um the judge rules Stanford over acceptance bounds, case closed, and then the legislature has to act if things are to be different when it comes to municipal powers.

In that case, um do you think that that is something that could be resolved rather quickly, or do you think that would just drag on and drag on for a number of years as um the lifetime fitness case, I think dragged on for something?

It was like seven years, an unbelievable amount of time.