1. Beyond Bean Counting: Case Conclusions for Public Reporting and Internal Credits
David A. Hindin, Director
Enforcement Targeting and Data Division, OC
Senior Enforcement Managers Meeting
Washington, DC
March 27, 2007

2. How We Count Judicial Case Conclusions
Per OECA October 2003 “Revised Approach for Counting EPA Enforcement Case Initiations and Conclusions”, we ended our practice of granting “extra credits”. This guidance was developed by a Regional/OECA workgroup.
We concluded that our prior practice from FY91 through FY02, of granting “extra credits” for certain types of enforcement was too complicated, was not transparent for the public and did not accurately reflect our work.
“Beginning with the end-of-year FY 2003 case counts, … the number of case initiations and conclusions reported … will be only the actual number of these cases initiated and concluded.”
Workgroup Members:
Joel Blumstein and Clara Chow, Region 1
Walter Mugdan, Region 2
Lydia Isales, Karen Melvin, and Suzanne Canning, Region 3
Bill Anderson, Ruth Gibson, Teresa Shirley-Wright, Region 4
Bert Frey and Francene Harris, Region 5
Walter Biggins, Suzanne Murray, and Connie Overbay, Region 6
Martha Steincamp and Becky Dolph, Region 7
David Janik and Brenda Cazier, Region 8
Steve Armsey, Region 9
Meg Silver and Debbie Flood, Region 10
David Nielsen and Rosemarie Kelley, ORE
Frederick F. Stiehl, OC
Betsy Smidinger, OC
Dan Palmer, OC
Joe Acton, OC
Lynn Vendinello, OC
Elizabeth Vizard, OC
Merle Miller, OC

3. General Rule for Public Counting Judicial Case Conclusions
General Rule: Each case conclusion – meaning each Consent Decree - receives one case conclusion count that we report publicly.
For a Multi-Regional case for which there are multiple records in ICIS (one for each participating Region) we officially count only one conclusion for the case (because there is only one CD) and give the “bean” to the lead Region.
If a case concludes with more than one consent decree (as often occurs in CERCLA cases) each decree receives a separate case conclusion credit.

4. Current Practice for Internal Credits for National (multi-Regional cases)
The lead region for a multi-region (national case) gets the case conclusion “bean”, which reflects both accounting transparency (one CD) and the often larger contribution of the lead region in developing and settling the case.
Each region does receive its proportionate share of the outcomes as determined by the case team for:
Penalty dollars
Injunctive relief and SEP dollars
Pounds of pollutants.

5. How We Count Judicial Case Conclusions
ICIS was not designed to support both our public reporting of national case conclusions and allocate of outcome results by region. To accomplish this in ICIS:
Each region in a national case enters a conclusion, so that it can enter its share of the outcomes (dollars and pounds). OC distributes these outcomes to each region in the OECA regional trip reports.
OC manually subtracts from the EOY judicial case conclusion number produced by ICIS the conclusion counts that represent a participating role, but not the lead region role, in a national case.
OC is interested in fixing ICIS to address these problems and others associated with multi-regional cases.
Difficult to identify national cases in ICIS.
Data quality checks for national case outcomes require more work.
Cannot easily identify the biggest cases in ICIS since the outcomes are split.
ECHO data on national cases can be confusing.
Regions cannot track consent decree milestones for facilities in national cases separately.

6. Transition to Region 6 presentation
Region 6 has a presentation on our internal crediting of national (multi-Regional) case conclusions.
We also have a proposal on this, but will first defer to the Region.

7. Proposal for internal credits for big cases
We start with objective of not changing our principle of one conclusion equals one CD entered in federal court.
There are often substantial differences in contribution between leading a national case and participating in a national case.
OECA Top Tier Measure # 3 addresses big cases.
Almost all national (multi-regional) cases will meet criteria for big cases.

8. Big Cases: OECA Top Tier Measure #3 (also #9 in draft OECA Key Management Measures (aka “Big 12”)
Description
Breakouts
Purpose
Performance baseline or target?
Current Use
Production frequency and data source 3
Number of concluded cases with value over 1 million (dollars or lbs) for IR or pollutants reduced, or $500K in penalties
By region
To monitor production of major enforcement actions
No target
New measure, used only for OECA management report
ICIS national standard report, with manual sorts.

9. Draft Top Tier Measure #3 display for FY2006 Conclusions
Draft Top Tier Measure #3 display for FY2006 Conclusions. A case shows multiple times if it meets more than 1 criteria.
Region
Number of Cases with Pollutant Reductions of 1M lbs. or More in FY 06
Number of Cases with Complying Action Values of $1M or More in FY 06
Number of Cases with Penalty Values of $500K or More in FY 06
Settlements Not Including Nat Cases With Region Lead
National Case Settlements With Region Lead
National Case Settlements With Region Participating, But Not Lead R1 13 R2 6 2 16 R3 1 28 3 R4 20 22 R5 8 4 R6 14 R7 9 R8 11 R9
R10 7 10
Total 75
162 5 15 26
Regions receive official settlement count when lead on national cases, but do not receive a settlement count when participating in national cases without being the lead.

10. Draft Top Tier Measrue #3 Display for FY 2006 Conclusions

11. Discussion on Big Case Counting