Mike wrote:
Hawkflyer wrote:
These authorities can have separate taxing authority with sanction of the legislature, and they stand outside the normal restrictions in other areas. Only if they actually get funding from a governmental entity can they be forced to adhere to the same restriction that apply to government.
Check out
this article. It tells part of the story you need to understand.
You are confused - the article pertains to the concept of sovereign immunity under Virginia law and if anything stands for the proposition that local authorities are in fact terated as municipal corporations under the law - local authorities are local authorities regardless of where they get their money, and the NOVA park authority is a local authority and they know they are preempte by 15.2-915 and have taken specific action to repeal their old preempted gun banning regulations.
I am not confused, you are missing my point.
As I said there are comparisons between Park authorities and other types of locally created authorities. These entities are all over the place and they are not government entities in all cases.
You are lost in the specifics of the gun issue. While I have provided the sovereign immunity link as an example of the unexpected consequences of the formation of these organizations, I am not arguing that this particular hospital is sovereign. I am also NOT making any argument related to NVRPA and their firearms status. All I am trying to point out is that these authorities are held to different standards and laws than the governments of the jurisdictions that they serve. They are frequently held to be separate entities from the local government and so the same restrictions may not always apply that might with an outright governmental entity.
There were a number of court battles fought to establish what laws might apply to NVRPA in the 1970's and 80's. Because they had accepted federal funds a number of federal laws came into play that would not have otherwise.
The point I was trying to make here is that you cannot assume that simply because this hospital authority serves a seemingly governmental function, and that they are located in Virginia or even that they may be owned by a local government, that they are in fact a governmental entity that would be covered by the general prohibition on gun regulations that would apply to an actual governmental body. The courts will look at where they get their funding. If they do not get public funds, you may have to go to court to establish the actual status of the organization. This difference in legal status is one of the reasons local governments use "Authorities" to perform certain functions outside the normal governmental umbrella.
Regards
