Legal director tells appraisal commission ABC settlements should be final, urges formal hardship waiver rulemaking

Paul Grabowski, the department's legal program director, told the Connecticut Real Estate Appraisal Commission at its May meeting that acceptance-by-consent (ABC) settlement agreements should be treated as final and not later waived.

"Once an ABC is accepted as a settlement, it should be final," Grabowski said, arguing that allowing an accepted ABC to be later waived creates legal and administrative complications, including refunds and uncertainty about the binding nature of agreements.

Grabowski told commissioners the department is drafting regulations to establish a separate hardship-waiver process because, he said, Connecticut currently lacks codified rules for hardship waivers in the appraiser statute and regulations. "Those regulations never got codified," he said. "What happens when there's not a regulation or statute for something like that is that you are legally susceptible because someone could say you are arbitrarily making these decisions."

The legal director also described the commission's proper role in investigations. Grabowski said commissioners must remain impartial as the board is the finder of fact in hearings, and prior involvement in an investigation can create grounds for appeal. To draw on commissioners' expertise without compromising impartiality, he outlined the department's current practice of asking a commissioner to "step down" from a hearing and serve as a witness or consultant during investigations.

Grabowski said some settlements may properly be formal discipline and recommended the commission discuss, outside the public meeting, criteria for when discipline should be characterized as formal. "Sometimes a settlement can be formal discipline; in some instances, they should be because the respondent has crossed the line," he said.

In response to commissioners' questions about enforcement mechanisms and penalty structure, Grabowski advised that the Attorney General's office can be consulted and named Drew Graham as the interim director/contact for the relevant AG unit. He suggested the commission could work with the department's legislative liaison to draft statutory language if the commission wanted a defined penalty schedule similar to other licensed professions.

Commissioners thanked Grabowski for the clarification and asked the department to return draft regulatory options on hardship waivers and to continue the conversation about when settlements should be treated as formal discipline. The commission agreed to keep the topic on next month's old-business agenda for further discussion.