State Lands Transfer Process
B-1: Evaluation with Public Notice and Comment: The Commissioner of Energy and Environmental Protection may elect to evaluate the property and may recommend that the land be preserved or that conditions be imposed on the transfer. There is no time limit for this review. The Commissioner's report and draft recommendations will be published in the Environmental Monitor with another 30-day public comment period.
B-2: Final DEEP Recommendations: If the DEEP Commissioner has published a draft recommendation for public review and comment (B-1, above), then DEEP will publish any comments it receives in the Environmental Monitor along with DEEP's responses and the Commissioner's final recommendations regarding the property.
B-3: Final Determination by OPM: If the DEEP Commissioner makes a recommendation for the land, the last step in the process is the publication of OPM’s final determination in the Environmental Monitor regarding disposition of the property. The property then may be transferred after 15 days with no further public notice, in accordance with OPM's determination.
* IMPORTANT : Most proposed transfers do not go through all of the above steps. The land may be sold or transferred after the close of the initial public comment period of Step A if no comments are received. (That is, it may be transferred after a single notice.) If comments are received but DEEP does not elect to conduct and publish a more thorough study of the property, the land may be sold or transferred 15 days after publication of the public comments and OPM's responses to those comments (that is, after a total of two notices). The proposed transfer will be the subject of four or five notices only if there are comments from the public and if DEEP conducts an optional evaluation and offers a recommendation.
You can view a flow chart of the steps described above.
Note: some sales of surplus state properties also require approval by two committees of the General Assembly; this and other procedural requirements unrelated to publication in the Environmental Monitor can be found in Section 4b-21 of the Connecticut General Statutes.
The Office of Policy and Management (OPM) maintains a list of properties that have been through the public comment phases that includes links to comments received and the OPM's responses. The OPM website also presents an overview of the entire process for disposing of surplus state properties.