In court documents filed last week, Daniel Banyai, the owner of Slate Ridge in Pawlet, has claimed that he’s brought his property into compliance with court orders, submitting photos of his deconstructed facilities.
Now, Banyai’s lawyer has asked the judge to dismiss Banyai’s more than $100,000 in fines and the order for his arrest and imprisonment filed last month.
Slate Ridge, a paramilitary training facility that invited militia groups to train on its grounds in West Pawlet, has been the subject of local outrage, statewide controversy and national media attention.
Banyai’s July 28 filing in state Environmental Court marked the latest in a yearslong back-and-forth between Banyai and officials in the town of Pawlet over the facility’s zoning violations. The matter seemed to culminate earlier last month when Judge Thomas Durkin issued an arrest warrant, declaring that Banyai was in contempt of a March 2021 court order that required him to dismantle unpermitted structures on his property.
Banyai’s attorney asked the state Environmental Court last month to pause his client’s pending arrest while he appeals the court’s decision to the Vermont Supreme Court. While Banyai’s zoning violations are a civil matter, his continued violation of his court orders allowed the judge to order his imprisonment.
After initial disagreement with the town of Pawlet, Rutland County Sheriff Daniel Fox visited the edge of Banyai’s property in an attempt to arrest him, he told the Bennington Banner, but said a separate warrant was needed to enter the property.
Now, in an affidavit and in attached photos, Banyai has claimed he deconstructed a building facade, school building, berms and a grain silo that were in violation of court orders.
“I am in full compliance with the Order and have deconstructed and removed all applicable structures from my property,” Banyai wrote in the affidavit.
The photos attached to Banyai’s affidavit appear to show his property before and after the deconstruction of the remaining items that left him in violation of the court’s previous decision. He had previously failed to comply with a court-ordered site inspection.
In his motion to purge Banyai’s civil contempt sanctions, Robert Kaplan, Banyai’s attorney, suggested that the arrest warrant and fines were an effort to compel his client to follow the court’s orders in the civil case, not measures meant as punishment.
“The coercive purpose of the civil contempt remedies imposed by the Court is also no longer applicable since the Defendant has adhered to the Court’s order and performed the ‘act required by the court,’” the attorney wrote.
Kaplan did not respond to messages asking whether Banyai would allow Pawlet officials onto his property to confirm he had complied with zoning regulations.
Merrill Bent, the Pawlet town government’s attorney, was unavailable for comment on Tuesday.
On July 25, the Vermont Supreme Court assigned a case number to Banyai’s appeal, but has taken no further actions.
