21-08-25 EMC minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Any order issued shall become final after 20 days. Once it is served, a person has 20 days to appeal to the Director and the Commission. A request for an appeal would create a hearing before the Commission. Whenever a hearing is requested on any penalty imposed, the penalty shall become due and payable only upon completion of all review proceedings and the issuance of a final order. So after everything is done and the Commission has made a decision, then that penalty would be the final and decisive penalty. Once the Commission issues a final decision and order, that could be appealed to the Circuit Court as well. All hearings before the Commission shall be conducted as a contested case hearing. A contested case hearing is a quasi-judicial proceeding, and the Commission sits as both judge and jury in these contested case hearings. Therefore, the Commission is not allowed to conduct independent fact finding. The applicant-appellant has the burden of proof, so it is that person’s burden to bring the information to show that the person has not violated the code. So you must base your decision on what is presented at the hearing, not on something that you have heard from outside. In a contested case hearing, DEM or the Directoris one party, and the individual or business opposing the violation order is the other. There also could be a party as an Intervenor. So let’s say a business illegally dumping trash between two properties, and one entity on the other side is another business or a homeowner, who wants to get in on this and say, hey, I also have standing to also be a party to this contested case, because this stuff is coming over to my property. And so the Commission would first hear a petition on whether that person really has standing to intervene in this contested case. If the Commission so decides that that person has standing to be an intervenor, then the Commission would allow that person to be a party. And so there would be the Director, the Applicant/Appellant, and the Intervenor. And each party would have rights too, to present evidence and/or rebuttal evidence. The Commission can find that a violation has occurred. You can then have penalties, which is up to $1,000 per day. You can affirm or modify the order that was previously issued, meaning that you will get a copy of the order that was sent, andyou can look at that order and say if there were conditions in there that you felt were fair or that needed to be modified in some way, that would be up to the Commission’s discretion on whether the order should be modified. With that said, if the Commission were to look at the order and said, this is too much to modify, let’s just rescind the whole thing and then we will issue our own order. And basically every decision you make, you have to issue an order with findings of fact and conclusions of law. Commissioner Cardwell asked about the maximum fine of $1,000 per day that could be reduced if the Commission so chose. Her question is, how would we decide on, for example, $500 per day? What would we base that on? How would we come to that determination? 17