As a result, land-use lawyers say, owners often learn months or years after the 30-day period has expired that they are being displaced.

Then last month, Michael T. Sillerman, a land-use lawyer who had volunteered his time, determined that nothing stood in the way.

I have spent 20 years in politics and learned that nothing is as deadly as meetings full of developers, land-use lawyers and bureaucrats.

Chuck Cohen, the town's land-use lawyer, once responded:

"They're losing money every time somebody with kids moves to town," said Mark Branse, a land-use lawyer in Glastonbury.

"It's kind of a tax on development," said Lawrence Feldman, a land-use lawyer in Uniondale.

And so, as Fitzgerald said then and the land-use lawyers say now, we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Her husband, Kenneth, is a land-use lawyer.

As a land-use lawyer, she was often at odds with development interests.

Because many land-use lawyers had worked in government, they knew where political power was situated and had a bantering familiarity with city officials.