If an office is doing all they can do, who says it would be illegal to stay in their timeline, and only do what you can do? No office can walk on water. I was not suggesting they did anything wrong, just brought up the possibility, they are over worked for the task at hand. I do not know how they handle the possibility of them having too much work to do.
I WAS NOT IMPLYING THEY ARE DOING ANYTHING WRONG. I do not know, nor am I really interested in their business practices or how the process works. . Like I have already said, if my permit shows up on day 44 or 84, I am in no hurry to get it. I am looking at this like when it gets here, .005% of my life changes a little.
Here's what you said, Gary:
Pushing a rattlesnake into a corner, may not get the outcome we want.
If the law says 45 days, and we push the issue, they could start denying applicants, to free up their backlog, and tell us to reapply later, and pay the fees all over again.
It was pretty clear what you were implying.
You just said:
If an office is doing all they can do, who says it would be illegal to stay in their timeline, and only do what you can do?
That isn't what you said originally. However, even if it was, this is not the current situation. The law says it must be within a certain time frame, and if the State Patrol is unable to finish within that frame, that the permit MUST be issued.
The State Patrol is currently unable to consistently issue/deny permits within the time frame, and yet they are not issuing the permits as required by law.
My point is simple---we all know that their office is understaffed and overworked. As such, responding politely to them, notifying them that they are not in compliance with the law, and notifying our representatives that the State Patrol is currently not in compliance with the law, will have an effect. It worked last year, it'll work again. Perhaps, it might even work well enough that they will add staffing so it keeps being a timely process.
Ignoring it will not fix the problem. As we found last year, politely being factual about the situation works.
The people at the State Patrol are good folks, trying to do many things. It isn't their fault that there are problems---but at the same time, it is their responsibility to fix the problem, and if we want the problem fixed, it is
our responsibility to let people know that there is a problem to be fixed.
That's my opinion, everyone else can certainly ignore it. However, I strongly suggest sentences like "
If the law says 45 days, and we push the issue, they could start denying applicants, to free up their backlog, and tell us to reapply later, and pay the fees all over again"
not occur, because such an action WOULD be illegal, and implying that the State Patrol staff would do so is not helpful.
Many people already find it rather offensive that we have to effectively petition to exercise our rights---but we are doing it, because it is the law. For those people, waiting even longer is simply not acceptable. In cases like this, notifying the appropriate representatives that there is an issue gets us closer to a solution.