State needs months to decide Hercik’s fate
It will take several more months before a hearing examiner renders a decision that could strip Fayette County’s chief assessor of the state license he needs to do his job, according to a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of State. Jill Goodrich said Wednesday that hearing examiner John F. Alcorn, who presided over two days’ worth of testimony in Harrisburg last October, closed the evidentiary record Feb. 3 in the state’s case against James A. Hercik, CPE.
Alcorn at the same time set a briefing schedule, said Goodrich, which means the commonwealth has 60 days to file a post-hearing brief, after which Hercik’s attorney has 60 days to do the same. Those deadlines translate into a maximum of four months, not counting the time it takes Alcorn to make a decision.
“The hearing examiner will then probably take several months to make a decision, because he’s got several cases before that (one) and this is a big case,” said Goodrich.
Hercik said Wednesday that he was hoping for a quicker resolution of the case.
“We expected a decision by now, quite honestly,” said Hercik.
In the case against Hercik, Alcorn is serving as hearing examiner for the State Board of Real Estate Appraisers. Hercik faces 22 charges levied by the state Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs, arising from alleged problems with assessments on six properties, including the homestead of state Rep. Larry Roberts (D-South Union Township).
During the two days of hearings before Alcorn, Hercik’s attorney Robert Hoffman centered his defense around the themes that Hercik in most instances wasn’t the responsible assessor, and that the county implemented different assessment methodologies long before Hercik became chief assessor in 1988
However, Hercik admitted that he personally used a common level ratio of 13.4 percent to set values in Roberts’ neighborhood, while searching for an appropriate adjustment factor to make those values fit within an admittedly flawed assessment system.
Testimony during Hercik’s hearing revealed that the integrity of Fayette County’s 1958 assessment system was first breeched as early as the early 1970s, and that at least two other assessment methods were added to the mix in subsequent years.
The county implemented a reassessment in 2003, correcting the longstanding disparities that had resulted in property owners being graded under several different assessment systems.