Opinion ID: 2314725
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The denial of the motion to reopen the proceedings.

Text: Petitioners contend that the Mayor's Agent erred in refusing to reopen the permit application proceedings in response to a motion based on an October 21, 1981 newspaper article. At the hearings a District of Columbia government representative testified that efforts were underway to transfer the District's Georgetown waterfront property, which adjoins the site of intervenor's development, to the National Park Service with the intent that the site be used as a park. In her order of October 20, 1981, however, the Mayor's Agent found that preferences for and efforts to provide a park on the Georgetown waterfront were irrelevant to the issue before her, viz., the compatibility of the proposed project and the historic district. The newspaper article, published after issuance of the order, reported that the District of Columbia planned to lease a portion of its waterfront property for private commercial use. The decision whether to reopen the proceedings was vested in the sound discretion of the Mayor's Agent. Administrative consideration of evidence... always creates a gap between the time the record is closed and the time the administrative decision is promulgated.... If upon the coming down of the order litigants might demand rehearing, as a matter of law because some new circumstance has arisen, some new trend has been observed, or some new fact discovered, there would be little hope that the administrative process could ever be consummated in an order that would not be subject to reopening. It has been almost a rule of necessity that rehearings were not matters of right, but were pleas to discretion. And likewise it has been considered that the discretion to be invoked was that of the body making the order, and not that of a reviewing body. [ United States v. Interstate Commerce Commission, 396 U.S. 491, 521, 90 S.Ct. 708, 722, 24 L.Ed.2d 700 (1970) (quoting Interstate Commerce Commission v. Jersey City, 322 U.S. 503, 514-15, 64 S.Ct. 1129, 1134-1135, 88 L.Ed. 1420 (1944)).] See Northeast Broadcasting, Inc. v. FCC, 130 U.S.App.D.C. 278, 287, 400 F.2d 749, 758 (1968) (decision whether to conduct rehearing is addressed to sound discretion of administrative agency). Given her conclusion that plans to create a park on the Georgetown waterfront were irrelevant to the evaluation of intervenor's design proposal, the Mayor's Agent did not abuse her discretion in denying petitioners' request. [6]