Posted on 08/25/2012 12:41:46 PM PDT by IbJensen
(CNSNews.com) – “Thinking of renting or selling a home or apartment?” asks the Environmental Protection Agency. “Make sure you disclose its lead-based paint history. Mr. Wolfe Landau did not and it cost him a $20,000 fine.”
Landau is one of the many landlords and realtors fined by the EPA for failing to provide an “EPA-approved” pamphlet to tenants seeking to rent or buy a house built before 1978.
And for the EPA, the non-compliance business is booming.
Juan Hernandez of Bridgeport, Conn., faces seven “Level 1” violations for failing to provide seven tenants with a copy of the “Protect Your Family From Lead In Your Home” pamphlet, which was mandated by the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992.
In Section 1018 of the law, Congress directed the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the EPA to require the disclosure of lead-based paint hazards before the sale or lease of housing units built before 1978, the year lead-based paint was banned.
The EPA filed a complaint against Hernandez on March 27, detailing notifying him that the agency plans to collect $49,980 from him, which works out to $7,140 for each pamphlet he failed to distribute.
“Failure to provide a purchases or lessee an EPA-approved lead hazard information pamphlet pursuant to 40 C.F.R. § 745.1 07(a)(I) results in a high probability of impairing the lessee’s ability to properly assess information regarding the risks associated with exposure to lead-based paint and to weigh this information with regard to leasing the target housing in question,” the complaint read.
Hernandez’s total fine for other disclosure violations, such as supplying the property’s lead history and a “Lead Warning Statement,” reached $127,150, payable to the "Treasurer of the United States of America."
The EPA says the penalties are justified because lead exposure – a concern when the paint is flaking -- can be hazardous to young children and can lead to damage to the brain and nervous system. Thus the agency requires landlords to provide information about the risks involved.
The pamphlet offers tips to “protect your family,” such as keep play areas clean, keep children from chewing window sills or other painted surfaces, and clean up paint chips immediately.
Available in six different languages, including Spanish, Vietnamese, Russian, Arabic and Somali, the pamphlet is “printed with vegetable oil-based inks on recyclable paper,” it states.
The 13-page pamphlet is available online, or landlords may get one free copy from the National Lead Information Clearinghouse. They may also pay $26 for 50 copies from the U.S. Government Printing Office.
The EPA told CNSNews.com that under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) the agency has the authority to “inspect, subpoena documents, require testimony and bring civil administrative actions in target housing (housing, schools and daycares built before 1978).”
That means houses or apartment built before 1978 are subject to inspection at any time by an EPA inspector to make sure sellers and landlords are in compliance with the law.
In calculating the penalty, the EPA says it takes into account "the nature, circumstances, extent (whether children or pregnant women are affected) and gravity" of the violation -- as well as the violator's ability to pay and continue doing business. The rules for assessing the penalty run 12 pages.
Violations can often be settled with the EPA and result in lower fines. In fact, the EPA awards discounts of up to 30 percent for a cooperative “attitude” in cases that are settled prior to a hearing.
The EPA make its clear that the penalty must be enough to create an incentive for landlords and realtors to comply with the law. No one should profit by violating the disclosure rule, in other words.
Several cases have led to penalties as high as $50,000 for failure to distribute the EPA brochures.
In September 2011, Douglas Paulino of Hartford, Conn., failed to provide the EPA-approved pamphlet to six lessees, resulting in a fine of $49,700, according to an Initial Decision and Default Order.
A Default Order also was filed against John C. Jones of Roxbury, Massachusetts, in February 2012, when a penalty of $30,960 was levied for not providing the pamphlet to four tenants.
Lester Sykes, of Chicago, Illinois, was penalized $54,180 for 11 counts of failing to provide the lead hazards pamphlet in October of 2011. Sykes was ordered to pay total fines of $159,310 after he failed to respond to a complaint filed against him in 2008.
According to the EPA’s enforcement and penalty policy, individuals who knowingly violate a disclosure rule can face up to a year in prison and a maximum criminal fine of $25,000 for each day of the violation. Individuals can be fined a maximum of $100,000 for a single violation that does not result in death, while organizations can be fined up to $200,000 per count.
In addition, landlords can still be fined even if they prove that their property is free of lead-based paint. In that case, the EPA will merely “adjust the proposed penalty downward.”
“EPA may adjust the proposed penalty downward by up to 50 percent if the violator provides documentation that clearly demonstrates that the target housing was interior lead-based paint free in accordance with applicable state and/or local requirements at the time the alleged violation occurred,” the policy states.
“In addition, landlords can still be fined even if they prove that their property is free of lead-based paint. In that case, the EPA will merely “adjust the proposed penalty downward.””
Complete bull squats!
Instead of fining them, the EPA should give them a grace period to hand out the pamphlets. These huge fines are ridiculous.
1. Do not rent to people who have young children.
2. If you have renters who have young children, do not renew the lease
3. Do not rent to people who you suspect would use this law to try to get some kind of compensation from you or who would hire an ambulance chaser lawyer.
Profile, profile, profile.
Sign and Date?? wow.
March 29, 2012
With the country focused on this week’s high drama at the Supreme Court, President Obama’s EPA quietly released long-delayed regulations to apply global warming rules never authorized by Congress to new coal-fired power plants.
>>3. Do not rent to people who you suspect would use this law to try to get some kind of compensation from you or who would hire an ambulance chaser lawyer.<<
4. DO NOT RENT TO LAWYERS!
Bump
The EPA is a headless monster with an Agenda and the means to tear America down from within in the hopes of taking us back to the stone age.
Your own downthread post 25 even says so!
"EPA quietly released long-delayed regulations to apply global warming rules never authorized by Congress to new coal-fired power plants."
I agree Congress created this monster and Congress should kill it (although I think the President can as well). But the EPA is inherently evil.
Look at the label on your Christmas lights. It says "wash your hands"..."wires contain LEAD".
EPA is but one of the Federal “poster children” of “Mission Creep”. When this Agency was first authorized (1970 under R.Nixon), there was ample reasons for its creation. Now, the air and water are emphatically cleaner but all of those bureaucrats still need work and so smaller and smaller items of dispute become magnified.
Same things with “Endangered Species Act” and “Navigable Waters Act”. These are well-intentioned laws to meet perceived public needs, but we all need to remember what path is paved with “good intentions”! Every bureaucracy functions like a living organism, it either grows or dies. Are there any statues of government employees who did away with their own job(s)?
That goes without saying!
Decades ago in New York area tenements, black fatherless children ran out of things to do so they started eating the paint off the walls.
Unfortunately, as with most imported toys from China, the lead seeped into the little brains and caused them to behave unnaturally. Like either embracing homosexuality or desiring to rape little girls.
Only in Bizarro Land. In Realityville, the EPA was granted carte blanche to write and enforce it's own view of the world in a lot of areas.
Congress is due full blame for creating the monster that is the EPA, but the EPA has long ago slipped any leash held by the Congress.
The EPA needs to be shut down, and all then-current employees of the EPA re-assigned to a rubber room like that used for failed teachers in NYC.
I suspect if you go to this gubmint site and download this pamphlet, you are automatically put on a list of people the EPA will visit.
Can you not see the zeal with which EPA is expanding their mandate by broad interpretation of the laws passed by Congress?
Yes, Congress is responsible for creating these messes but the administration administrates the laws as they see fit within their interpretation of the law.
The best man at our wedding and his wife bought a three family house in New Haven, Connecticut in the early 1990’s because they weren’t from the area because the wife was getting her PhD at Yale and the real estate agent convinced them that the area was undergoing a “revival”. (Yeah, but only the area 4 blocks closer to the shore.
Brian was very good at fixing things up and turned this old home into a masterpiece. He put in inlay tile, added al kinds of architectural features, the house was gorgeous. He and his wife rented the first floor to a single mom with a few kids. Youngest kid was known for eating anything, especially the dirt in the yard.
Anyway, the single mom’s dirt eating kid ends up with a really high level of lead in his blood. because the single mom got state aid, the state came in and went through the house from top to bottom. They found lead paint on one (1) window sill. This meant that they could sue Brian for big bucks!!
Moral of the story - never rent to anyone on the dole
Don’t SIGN anything and go for a jury trial over this crap...
Somewhere along the way, most people sign their name to something that entangles them in the administrative rather than legal side of this type of crap...
Don’t SIGN anything and go for a jury trial over this crap...
Somewhere along the way, most people sign their name to something that entangles them in the administrative rather than legal side of this type of crap...
From Atlas Shrugged:
Continues bureaucrat Ferris: “Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against . . . We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted [Frederick Mann: Obfuscation of meaning is a key element of the con games bureaucrats and politicians play.] - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
If anybody knows a delegate to the RNC, they could raise a ruckus with 2,500 stamped postcards. On each would be a list of government agencies, and by what percent delegates think that each of their budgets should be reduced.
_EPA
_DOJ
_ENERGY
_EDUCATION
_HUD
_HHS
_TREASURY
_INTERIOR
_AGRICULTURE
_COMMERCE
_LABOR
_TRANSPORTATION
_HOMELAND SECURITY
_FDA
_USDA
_NOAA
_INTERIOR
_CORP FOR NATL AND COMM SERVICE
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