Due Process

I wiki’d “due process” to better understand its meaning:

Due process is the principle that the government must respect all of the legal rights that are owed to a person according to the law. Due process holds the government subservient to the law of the land protecting individual persons from the state. When a government harms a person, without following the exact course of the law, then that is a due process violation which offends the rule of law.

Due process has also been frequently interpreted as limiting laws and legal proceedings (see substantive due process), so judges – instead of legislators – may define and guarantee fundamental fairness, justice, and liberty. This interpretation has proven controversial, and is analogous to the concepts of natural justice, and procedural justice used in various other jurisdictions. This interpretation of due process is sometimes expressed as a command that the government shall not be unfair to the people.

That explains why many of us are taking time off Monday and possibly Tuesday (Nov 22-23) to participate in a public hearing on the appeal of the DeKalb County Board’s approval of Waste Management’s siting application for a major expansion of the DeKalb County Landfill in Cortland.

The hearing is part of the due process afforded citizens to determine if the County Board’s process to arrive at its decision to approve the siting application was unfair to the people they represent and are bound to protect.

According to the regulations that govern such siting approvals the county board members were required to step outside of their legislative duties as elected officials and act almost as a jury to decide if the application met each of nine criteria outlined.

In accordance with the prerequisite host fee agreement, if terms and projections are all met, the county could receive $3 million in annual tipping fees each year for the next 40 years of the landfill’s operation. Such favorable terms were not to influence any of the county board members’ quasi-judicial decisions on whether the application met each the nine criteria.

We believe the host fees were a factor for most if not all of the 16 county board members who voted in favor of the expansion application.

They’ve already spent the money. Those projects were dependent upon final approval of Waste Management’s application for a seven-fold, 40 year expansion the DeKalb County Landfill to take in and bury 17 counties’ municipal waste. From around 300 tons per day to 2,000 tons per day. That is a due process violation.

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The landfill expansion appeal public hearing with the Illinois Pollution Control Board will begin Monday November 22^nd at 9am. It will be held in the Multi-purpose room of the DeKalb County Health Department 2550 North Annie Glidden Road. It is open to the public and open for public comment on the issue. If necessary, to hear public comments, the hearing will be extended to Tuesday, November 23.