By Don Hey
On February 9th I contacted Superintendent Beach of The New York State Police with questions concerning the NY Pistol Permit Recertification process. One question I specifically addressed was the required inclusion of the Driver’s License ID number. Referred to below as “NY Client ID”. Although the recertification process was an integral part of The NY Safe Act, Article 400 of the NYS Penal Law was never modified to require this additional information.
This was the reply I received via U.S. Mail: “The design and validation requirements of the newly created pistol permit recertification database necessitated the use of a known personal identifier. During the early development stages of the recertification database, limitations were readily recognized for each of the various personal identifiers considered. The decision to utilize the New York State client ID was ultimately selected as the best solution to successfully develop and implement solutions to the complex technology challenges of the project. "
"Moreover, and to address your concerns, recertification via the New York State Pistol Permit Recertification website cannot be completed without a NY Client ID, and certification via the paper form without the NY Client ID is currently being given consideration along with conforming instructions. "
"The New York State Office of Information Technology Service (OITS) is also working on various technological solutions to the certification process to allow certification without a NY State client ID. However OITS database engineers readily admit that changing the database requirements at this point would be a significant undertaking.”
So, one might ask why the objection to this “required” information? Although this information is readily available to The NY State Police it is not a requirement noted in Article 400 and many feel that authority needs to be given not taken. Also there are concerns they might take the liberty of uploading this information into mobile license plate readers thus standing in violation of The People v Garcia decided December 18th 2012 prohibiting such activity.
In May of 2015 I had the opportunity to enter into a meeting with the newly appointed Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan. During the course of this meeting pistol permit recertification was addressed. It was decided at that time that the counties would handle the recertification and the New York State Police had been given no authority to revoke a permit based on the recertification process. This was disclosed with senate counsel present in the room. So what happened? Again Governor Cuomo and The Political Appointee’s within The New York State Police have overstepped their boundaries and taken authority without getting proper authority!
In closing I have sent a reply to Superintendent Beach asking specifically if the omission of the NY Client ID on the paper form would trigger a failure to re-certify thus resulting in revocation of ones Pistol Permit. Also note that the deadline to re-certify is January, 31st 2018. I will wait to see how this and other matters are resolved.
