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Agencies: OATH/ECB

OATH/ECB is a hearing, not a fourth agency.

The agencies: the flow · HPD · DOB · OATH/ECB · 311

Of the 165,249 matters on the OATH/ECB docket in our record, 34,654 ended in a default judgment, nobody appeared to contest the notice, 21.0%, pulled August 27, 2026 from our own copy of the city record.

What OATH/ECB is

OATH, the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, is the city's own tribunal for agency-issued notices. Sitting on building and construction matters, it operates as ECB, the Environmental Control Board. OATH/ECB does not inspect buildings, does not decide what counts as a violation, and does not maintain a building or housing code of its own. DOB writes the notice; OATH/ECB is the room where that notice gets tested.

Treating OATH/ECB as a separate enforcement agency alongside HPD and DOB is the single most common error in this category. It is a venue, not an agency: the outcome recorded there describes whether the issuing agency's case held up, not a new finding of its own.

What happens at a hearing

Once DOB serves a notice, the matter is scheduled for a hearing. A respondent can appear and contest it, admit it, agree to a stipulated penalty, or not show up at all, in which case a default judgment is entered without a contested hearing ever taking place.

Hearing statusMatters
IN VIOLATION
a hearing was held and the judge found the respondent in violation
46,277
DEFAULT
nobody appeared to contest the notice, and a judgment was entered anyway
34,654
PENDING
a hearing date is on the calendar and has not yet concluded
22,043
DISMISSED
the notice did not hold up and the matter was dismissed
15,305
CURED/IN-VIO
a violation finding, with proof of correction accepted afterward
12,001
POP/IN-VIO
a violation finding, with proof of posting accepted afterward
11,769
ADMIT/IN-VIO
the respondent admitted the violation rather than contest it
10,900
No status recorded
no hearing outcome is recorded in our copy of the dataset
9,778
STIPULATION/IN-VIO
the respondent agreed to a stipulated penalty rather than contest it
2,522

28.0% of matters end with a violation finding after some form of hearing. 13.3% have a hearing date that has not yet concluded.

After a finding

A violation finding is not the end of the case. The respondent can still file proof that the condition was corrected, and DOB records whether that proof was accepted.

Certification statusMatters
CERTIFICATE ACCEPTED
the respondent filed proof of correction and DOB accepted it
58,529
NO COMPLIANCE RECORDED
no proof of correction is on file for this matter
43,311
No status recorded
no certification status is recorded in our copy of the dataset
37,596
CURE ACCEPTED
the respondent corrected the condition within a cure period, avoiding a penalty
12,001
N/A - DISMISSED
the matter was dismissed, so no certification applies
11,027
COMPLIANCE-INSP/DOC
compliance was confirmed by a reinspection or submitted documentation
2,785

35.4% of every matter on the docket has an accepted certificate of correction on file.

What is actually owed

Across the 80,904 matters our copy of the dataset marks active, 49.0% of the total, the recorded penalty imposed sums to 350,746,592 dollars, with 298,286,984 dollars still shown as a balance due. Across every matter ever recorded, active or resolved, 98,760,282 dollars has been paid. These are the figures our copy of the dataset carries at this deploy; a specific building's current balance should be checked against DOB's own record, not this aggregate.

Where OATH/ECB meets HPD

OATH/ECB's docket is DOB's channel, not HPD's. A building with a clean HPD record can still carry an active OATH/ECB matter, and the reverse holds too. Right now 12,355 properties carry both an open HPD violation and an active OATH/ECB matter at once, 37.7% of every property with an active matter on this docket. How often the two actually overlap, with the full numbers, is on the agencies hub.

Checking a specific matter

This page counts hearing outcomes in aggregate, never by address or respondent. A specific ECB violation number, its hearing date, and its current balance are looked up directly through OATH's own online case status search, not summarized here. What this page adds is the shape of the whole docket: how often a hearing actually happens, how often nobody appears, and how much of the record clears afterward.

What this page is not

This page counts hearing outcomes by status. It does not identify a building, an owner, or a specific respondent, and a penalty total here is not the same as a payoff amount for any one matter, which OATH's own record should confirm.

Aggregates only; no building or owner is named on this page. Sources: NYC Open Data, cited not linked. Status codes decoded, the record by borough, citywide, ViolationScout.