RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, A recent court decision, as well as a spate of cases that are currently in litigation, has brought to light the urgent need for this legislative body to focus its attention on what Illinois First District Appellate Court Justice Mathias W. Delort called "deficiencies in the manner in which the City of Chicago handles in-house adjudication of ordinance violations" in his majority opinion in the case of Stone Street Partners, LLC v. The City Of Chicago Department Of Administrative Hearings; and
WHEREAS, Through a series of enactments in the course of the late two decades, the Illinois legislature has allowed the removal of ordinance enforcement hearings from the judiciary to the local administrative level. Illinois Public Act 90-516, sponsored by Barack Obama, who was at that time an Illinois State Senator, established such in-house administrative adjudication and raised their judgments to equal court judgments. However the act was silent concerning the mechanism for how awarded monetary damages could be collected; and
WHEREAS, The municipalities developed a mechanism whereby they would file their administrative judgments with the circuit court, asking that they be registered as court judgments thereby making any monetary damages awarded collectible. In his opinion, Justice Delort noted that the "process has been so successful that the City of Chicago has established a large central hearing facility that rivals Illinois county courthouses in its size and case volume"; and
WHEREAS, Futhermore, and perhaps most significantly, the appellate court held that "representation of corporations at administrative hearings - particularly those which involve testimony from sworn witnesses, interpretation of laws and ordinances, and can result in the imposition of punitive fines - must be made by a licensed attorney at law". Although the city's Department Of Administrative Hearings (DOAH) allows non-attorneys to represent corporations at administrative heari...
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