Sec. 401.232. EVALUATION OF APPLICATIONS; COMMISSION SELECTION. (a) The commission shall have prepared by commission personnel or an independent contractor a written evaluation of each administratively complete application in terms of the criteria established under Sections 401.233-401.236.

(b) The commission shall conduct at least one public meeting in the county or counties where a compact waste disposal facility or federal facility waste disposal facility is to be located to receive public comments on the administratively complete applications. The commission shall set the time and place of the meetings as soon as practicable after the close of the period for administrative review of the applications.

(c) The commission may issue a request for further information to each applicant whose application is determined by the commission to be insufficient for the purposes of the commission's evaluation.

(d) The commission shall provide an applicant for whom a request for further information is issued two 30-day opportunities to adequately respond in the discretion of the commission.

(e) The commission shall use the written evaluations and application materials to evaluate each application according to the statutory criteria established by Sections 401.233-401.236. The commission shall evaluate each application for each statutory criterion for purposes of comparing the relative merit of the applications, giving:

(1) equal weight to each criterion within a tier of criteria; and

(2) the greatest weight to tier 1 criteria, greater weight to tier 2 criteria than to tier 3 criteria, and the least weight to tier 4 criteria.

(f) Before publication of the notice of the commission's intention to accept applications under Section 401.228, the commission by rule may adopt criteria in addition to the criteria under Sections 401.233-401.236 by which the commission may evaluate applications. The criteria must be consistent with those sections.

(g) Not later than the 270th day after it receives the last timely filed application, the commission, based on the written evaluations and application materials, shall select the application that has the highest comparative merit.

Added by Acts 2003, 78th Leg., ch. 1067, Sec. 7, eff. Sept. 1, 2003.