Folks, Some of you know my background and where I come from, but some do not and that's ok. It's my opinion that many that reside in our camp of approving of trapping, fur, and everything else do not understand how to ensure that a government body whether it be federal, state or local is not giving you the run around about assistance of any sorts. Typically what happens is you will call, they wont return calls, if they do answer, they will give you 1 reason, then change it. Almost surely they will provide very little to no information about the actual regulation, law, code, and/or other official documents regarding your request. Now keep in mind what we have on our side is what I call the "common sense" rule, which drives almost every rule in the USA. There are times that this rule will not apply, but almost generally it's because there is an unrelated reason for this as it pertains to the law. What this means is that there is LIKELY not an official reason for why they are not helping you, maybe the person is bad at answering emails, maybe they don't understand the rules, maybe they left the job and nobody backfilled that position, the list goes on and on.
What you can do universally in almost every state in 2022 is perform a public records request of any federal, state or local employees email correspondence. There are only two factors here, most states have implemented a fee of so much cents per page to request this AND/OR you must use the correct keywords with the request to get the information you want. For instance, if a guy/girl is trying to get a water meter installed, and getting the run around and the water department is a state entity, that guy/girl can just submit a records request for the emails from the water department, regarding installation of water meter, at whatever address. What this does for you is enables you to see what they are saying about the issue. Now there other factors that may further limit your request depending on who you are doing the public records request on, but just understand this.
This is also why it's imperative that you ALWAYS use email, or if paper mailing always send it and force them to sign to accept it. You want a trail of whatever effort you are doing, so that if they continue to try to not assist you, it's easy to provide this proof and say, "I am an average citizen, taking steps far above what an average citizen would expect to take, just to accomplish this which is legal under insert relevant regulation, law, code, etc." Good luck to you all, use it wisely because it can really benefit you when you are trying to do something perfectly legal.
