The following is intended to be for academic/educational/informational purposes only and is not intended to advise anybody.
Woda - the 8 week limit law has no provisions for either civil or criminal penalties against the licensing authority if they do exceed 8 weeks. So while it does help to mention that you are aware of this, and that you are willing to go to the BFPE, you don't really want to go to the BFPE if you can avoid it since its a several month wait just to get a hearing.
To expand on that a little bit more. In Amborgio v. Board of Firearms Permit Examiners, et-al (42 CS 157) [Chief Ambrogio's 2d case that made it to the court, on this type of issue] the superior court made a few important statements:
(As of the 2d
Ambrogio case, there had been no appellate jurisprudence involving the particular statute, only a case before the Superior Court, which also had involved a time denial appeal by Donald Henriques which occurred during a time when there had been delays in processing reportedly because of an issue involving FBI fingerprint processing)
(1) Based on tests of mandates applicable to government agencies
described in
Teamsters v. Shapiro, the time-limit is directory, not mandatory. The Court in
Ambrogio described that directory mandates describe what should usually happen. The default status of a government mandate is directory. It is mandatory "...only when the government intended for the duty not to be performed at all, except within the time provided."
(Zoning Board of Appeals v. Freedom of Information Commission, 158 Conn 498, 1986)
(2) The legislature's intent, with respect to the perscribed time limit was to promote reasonable return times
(3) strict interpretation of the time limit negates the material intention of the statute
(4) processing must be done in a reasonable and diligent manner
(The court vacated an order issued by the Board of Firearms Permit Examiners ordering Chief Ambrogio to issue a permit to an appellant who claimed denial on the basis of time-delay).
My full, handwritten notes, are published at:
http://mp510sd.weebly.com/uploads/4/4/9/2/4492446/ambrogio_notes.pdf
A scan of the published decision is uploaded elsewhere on that website.