COMDTINST 16200.3A
16 OCT 1992
4.
(cont'd) recommended civil penalty and identifying the party
or parties against whom the sanction should be imposed are
also provided.
5.
MAJOR CHANGES. Major changes to this instruction include the
revision of recommended civil penalty assessments to reflect
the higher monetary penalty limits enacted by Congress;
centralized oversight of the civil penalty process from
referral to hearing officers through the collection of
penalties to obtain civil penalty action consistency; and
the inclusion of an impact assessment.
6.
BACKGROUND.
a.
Civil Penalty Process. References (a), (b), and (c)
provide guidance concerning handling of situations
warranting initiation of civil penalties. Reference (d)
sets forth the regulations providing for uniform civil
penalty hearing procedures. These rules are designed to
safeguard the rights of parties through procedural due
process, while using simplified proceedings that are fair
and impartial, easily understood, and readily available.
Civil penalty hearing officer guidelines were promulgated
by reference (e).
b.
Civil Penalty Cases. Cases are normally initiated by
local commands, forwarded to the appropriate district
program manager for review/endorsement, and submitted to
the civil penalty hearing officer for action. Civil
penalty cases should contain a recommended action,
including the identification of the possible responsible
party and recommended penalty amount which is considered
appropriate for the specific circumstances involved.
Supplemental information may also be forwarded, including
CG-4100 (Series), CG-5437, CG-840S-2, CG-835, and CG-
4200 reports. Exceptions to this routing system include
those cases referred to the Department of Justice for
criminal proceedings to the exclusion of civil penalty
cases in which the Department of Justice seeks a
judicially imposed civil penalty, or other actions (see
section 5.A.6 of reference (a) and part 7.H of reference
(c)).
c.
Recordkeeping. For each civil penalty case either the
initiating command or the district program manager, as
appropriate, assigns case identification numbers and
enters case data in the marine violation (MV) product
set of the Marine Safety Information System (MSIS).
7.
IMPACT ASSESSMENT. This instruction, while assigning no new
tasking to operational units, provides for centralized
annual evaluation of the civil penalty process.
Furthermore, the enclosures incorporated penalty ranges which
reflect current maximum penalty amounts enacted by Congress.
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