Mayor Bloomberg signing legislation transferring ECB to OATH



Standing (L to R): Simcha Felder, Roberto Velez,
Carole Post and David Weprin

ECB Legislation

On July 23, 2008, the City Council passed legislation to transfer the overall administration of ECB from DEP to the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH), and on August 12, 2008 Mayor Bloomberg signed the legislation into law. The law will become effective on November 23, 2008. Additionally, this legislation provides for the following operational changes at ECB that the City Council believes will improve customer service:

• If an appeal hasn't been decided in 180 days, after giving notice to ECB a respondent will have the right to go directly to State Supreme Court to challenge the ALJ's decision, without waiting for a decision from the full Environmental Control Board.



• The New York City Charter will recognize the authority of an ALJ to sanction a party for failing to provide proper discovery in a case in which that's required.



• ECB will adopt a new rule to ensure that language assistance services such as Language Line, profiled in this newsletter, are widely available for respondents who don't speak English.



• ECB will adopt a rule providing that if a respondent appears at ECB as required on an NOV, the ALJ cannot adjourn the hearing unless the respondent agrees, a representative of the issuing agency is present, or the representative's absence is due to extraordinary circumstances.



• ECB will adopt a rule to help prevent respondents from appearing at ECB on multiple occasions because the issuing officer fails to appear. Specifically, the rule will provide that if the first scheduled hearing date is properly adjourned for the issuing officer to appear, and if the respondent appears as required, the hearing cannot be adjourned if the officer does not appear, unless the respondent consents or there are extraordinary circumstances.



• ECB has committed to report back to City Council about progress toward implementing its electronic case management system by the end of the year.

Please note: Proposed ECB rules in connection with the operational changes associated with the legislation and described above will be published for notice and comment. The full text of the proposed rules will be made available for at least 60 days before the date of the final hearing.