Islip town sets public hearing on plan to set up bureau for civil town code violations

The town of Islip is seeking to create a 'quality of life' court that will allow residents to resolve town code violations without going to the local District Court.

At a meeting last week, the town board set a public hearing for July 18 at 2 p.m. to allow public feedback on the proposed “Bureau of Administrative Adjudication,” which town officials have pitched as a court that would that would speed up resolutions for cases involving town code compliance. 

“This will help us address many of the quality-of-life issues here in our Town, and resolve them quickly, conveniently and directly with our residents. Far too often, these matters get hung up in District Court, being postponed repeatedly, rather than being addressed and resolved. The objective is to answer any additional questions residents may have, with the goal being compliance,” Islip Supervisor Angie Carpenter said in a statement.

The court would address civil violations such as violations for decks, pools, unregistered vehicles, litter, debris and building permits, town officials said. 

If approved, the court would consist of an initial rotation of four administrative judges — attorneys "in good standing" who have practiced for at least three years — with representatives from different town departments on hand to help facilitate the process, officials said. Proceedings would occur twice per month and the court would launch in 2025.

The head of the bureau will be a director appointed by the town supervisor for a term of five years and must be an attorney, according to the proposed legislation. The bureau would have the power to issue fines but not criminal penalties, and would not have the power to rule on code constitutionality. 

State law indicates that a municipality with a population between 300,000 and 350,000 may adopt a local law establishing an administrative adjudication hearing procedure “for all code and ordinance violations regarding conditions which constitute a threat or danger to the public health, safety or welfare,” said Patricia Salkin, who is provost and professor at Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center.

The Town of Islip currently has a population of 337,922, according to the most recent estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

A local adjudication bureau helps municipalities address code violations more quickly, Salkin said. Otherwise, residents must go to court, which is already “bogged down with a lot of cases.”

“And these cases, which are addressing local nuisances, are often nuisances at the trial court,” she added."If you have a pool that is not permitted in the backyard, and you don't have fencing up or you haven't done things properly and it could cause somebody to potentially lose their life, that's significant and you don't want to delay that.”

The Town of Huntington was the first on Long Island to establish a Bureau of Administrative Adjudication in 2019, Newsday has previously reported. Other towns have since followed suit, including Oyster Bay, Babylon and East Hampton.

Oyster Bay, which passed the required legislation in March, has not yet opened the court or finalized plans. But town attorney Frank Scalera said the local bureau should provide “greater convenience for residents” and protect complainants from retaliation. 

New York state’s 2020 discovery reform measures would disclose the names of complainants if a case was tried in District Court, which also handles misdemeanors. But that’s not the case with a local bureau, an Oyster Bay spokesman said. 

Residents complaining about code violations to the bureau may remain anonymous.

“The goal of our town bureau is to achieve compliance with the law by better coordinating violations with the process for rectifying them with the Town’s building department,” Scalera said.

Islip residents interested in commenting on the proposed legislation may speak at the July hearing or send an email to the town clerk at townclerk@islipny.gov.

By Brianne Ledda

brianne.ledda@newsday.com@brianne_ledda

Brianne Ledda covers the Town of Islip for Newsday. She previously covered Southold and Greenport for The Suffolk Times and is a graduate of Stony Brook University.