New Jersey Customer-Sited Renewable Energy Rebates
March 29, 2009
New Jersey is commited to alternative energy development. Below is an outline of the updated rebate program.
Should you want to know more about structuring your investment in alternative energy, contact Hutchinson Business Solutions
You may email george@hbsadvantage.com
Last DSIRE Review: 02/02/2009
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Out of Work and Challenged on Benefits, Too
March 28, 2009
In Record Numbers, Employers Move to Block Unemployment Payouts
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 12, 2009; Page A01
It’s hard enough to lose a job. But for a growing proportion of U.S. workers, the troubles really set in when they apply for unemployment benefits.
More than a quarter of people applying for such claims have their rights to the benefit challenged as employers increasingly act to block payouts to former workers.
The proportion of claims disputed by former employers and state agencies has reached record levels in recent years, according to the Labor Department numbers tallied by the Urban Institute.
Under state and federal laws, employees who are fired for misbehavior or quit voluntarily are ineligible for unemployment compensation. When jobless claims are blocked, employers save money because their unemployment insurance rates are based on the amount of the benefits their workers collect.
As unemployment rolls swell in the recession, many workers seem surprised to find their benefits challenged, their former bosses providing testimony against them. On one recent morning in what amounts to one of Maryland’s unemployment courts, employees and employers squared off at conference tables to rehash reports of bad customer service, anger management and absenteeism.
“I couldn’t believe it,” said Kenneth M. Brown, who lost his job as a hotel electrician in October.
He began collecting benefits of $380 a week but then discovered that his former employer, the owners of the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, were appealing to block his unemployment benefits. The hotel alleged that he had been fired for being deceptive with a supervisor.
“A big corporation like that. . . . It was hard enough to be terminated,” he said. “But for them to try to take away the unemployment benefits — I just thought that was heartless.”
After a Post reporter turned up at the hearing, the hotel’s representative withdrew the appeal and declined to comment. A hotel spokesperson later said the company does not comment on legal matters. Brown will continue to collect benefits, which he, his wife and three young children rely on to make monthly mortgage payments on their Upper Marlboro home.
Unemployment compensation programs are administered by the states and funded by payroll taxes that employers pay. In 2007, employers put up about $31.5 billion in such taxes, and those taxes typically rise during and after recessions, as states seek to replenish the funds.
With each successful claim raising a company’s costs, many firms resist letting employees collect the benefit if they consider it undeserved.
“In some of these cases, employers feel like there’s some matter of principle involved,” said Coleman Walsh, chief administrative law judge in Virginia, who has handled many such disputes. But, he said, “nowadays it appears their motivation has more to do with the impact on their unemployment insurance tax rate. Employers by and large are more aware of unemployment as a cost of business.”
The cost of unemployment insurance has created an industry of “third-party agents” — companies that specialize in helping employers deal with the unemployment insurance administration. These firms represent employers in disputes with former employees over jobless benefits.
One of the largest is …., a St. Louis company active in the Washington area, which claims more than 8,000 clients.
The company’s Web site says that it removes “over $6 billion in unemployment claims liability annually.”
Joyce Dear, chief operations officer for tax management services at …., said firms such as hers help bring to light the issues surrounding an employee’s departure.
“You are limited to what is permissible,” she said. “What an employer can do is provide the facts around a separation. The awarding of the benefits is in the hands of the state.”
Wayne Vroman, a researcher at the Urban Institute, has documented the rise of challenges to unemployment claims using the Labor Department data. He found that the proportion of claims challenged on the basis of misconduct has more than doubled, to 16 percent, since the late 1980s. Claims disputed on the grounds that the worker simply quit represent about 10 percent of the otherwise eligible applications.
Even as more employers have alleged employee misconduct, their success rate has stayed relatively stable — they lose on such issues about two-thirds of the time.
“What is clear is that employers have become more willing to contest claims from claimants,” Vroman said of the data.
Hearing officers and others in the industry said it isn’t clear why the number of challenges to unemployment claims has grown. The labor force has changed over the years, with less of it devoted to manufacturing and more of it from the service sector.
Some suggested the rise in disputed benefits stems from the fact that it is easier today for employers to track claims and try to block those they consider unwarranted.
“Automation has contributed to the ease with which protests from the employer can be filed,” said Doug Holmes, president of UWC Strategy, a group that claims large and small employers among its members and represents their interests in unemployment matters.
Others speculated that changes in the law have made it easier for employers to block unemployment claims.
Rick McHugh, a staff attorney for the National Employment Law Project who began handling such cases in the 1970s, said court rulings have slowly enlarged the definition of employee misconduct, making it easier for employers to say they rightfully fired a worker.
“The courts are just not showing as much sympathy for employees who get fired,” he said. “There’s a higher standard of behavior that is expected of employees.”
For example, back in 1941, the Wisconsin Supreme Court considered the case of a cab driver who’d had three accidents in two weeks and also shorted the company on a 40 cent fare, turning in only 25 cents.
The court ruled that the driver was entitled to unemployment benefits because unintentionally careless or shoddy work did not constitute misconduct. It’s unlikely, McHugh said, that the case would be determined the same way today.
In many states, hearings are held daily on unemployment claims. The outcome most often turns on whether the former employee was guilty of misconduct.
With employees and employers as adversaries, it’s often difficult to determine the facts of a case, and just as difficult at times to separate misconduct from incompetence, which is not a reason to withhold the benefits.
During a day of hearings this week in Wheaton, human resources personnel sat across tables from former employees, and the discussion often turned to written warnings, company handbooks and who-told-what-to-whom.
A former assistant manager at Ri Ra, an Irish Bar in Bethesda, fended off complaints that, among other things, he’d failed to greet guests at the door and one time poured a beer for himself after hours.
A Verizon technician was charged with, in company terms, “detour and frolic.”
And a former salesman at Ethan Allen complained that there was no way he could have made his $35,000 sales quota — and that’s why he quit.
“It’s almost like a daily soap opera — but it’s real life,” veteran hearing examiner Scott Karp said. “In this economic climate, the threshold for what employers consider minimum acceptable behavior has changed. They decide they’re not going to put up with it anymore, so they start documenting the employee’s behavior and often enough, the issue winds up here.”
Our Perspective:
Unemployment claims are a much overlooked business expense.
Did you know that Unemployment Tax is the 2nd largest Employer mandated tax?
Basically, the Unemployment Fund can be seen as being a checking account with the state.
The state determines what your rate is.
The rate determines how much money you put into this account to pay claims.
Then the state notifies you how much they have taken out of the account to pay claims.
How do you know these rates are correct?
How do you know your reserves are correct?
How do you know if you are paying the proper amount for each claim?
Many business never ask this question!
This is one of the only employer taxes that you can control!
You could be overpaying unemployment taxes into the fund.
You may be overpaying claims!
You may be paying for claims that are not your responsibility!
We have worked with clients to review their rates and have provided a long term solution to manage their claims. As a result, we have reduced their rates and reduced the contribution they have to annually pay into the unemployment fund.
Would you like to know more, email george@hbsadvantage.com or you may call
856-857-1230.
We have clients who have operations thruout the United States.
We are a boutique firm with success with many high profile clients.
Visit us on the web to learn more
Obama Administration Says Energy Reform Not Negotiable
March 24, 2009
By Philip Elliott from AP
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s aides say the administration will work with Congress on his budget proposal, but energy independence is not subject to wheeling and dealing.
Obama planned to make the case Monday for a budget proposal that invests billions in research designed to reduce climate change and guarantees loans for companies that develop clean energy technologies. Obama has tied his first budget proposal as president to a renewable energy program to help the United States move toward energy independence.
In a fact sheet released Monday, the White House said Obama’s meeting with “clean energy entrepreneurs and leaders of the research community” will outline an energy program that draws on the administration’s $787 billion stimulus package for $39 billion at the Department of Energy and $20 billion in tax incentives for clean energy.
It also disclosed that his 10-year budget proposal contains spending of nearly $75 billion to make permanent existing tax cuts for energy research and experimentation.
“The president is prepared to negotiate on this budget with folks like those at this table … and the president’s been very clear about this, as has our budget director: We don’t expect these folks to sign on the dotted line,” said Jared Bernstein, Vice President Joe Biden’s economics adviser.
“What we do expect and what we are going to stand very firm on _ because this president, this vice president have made this clear _ that there are these priorities that brought them to the dance here: energy reform, health care reform, education, all done in the context of a budget that cuts the deficit in half over our first term.”
Obama and his aides plan an aggressive push to deliver a $3.6 trillion budget that contains many of his campaign promises. He plans to speak about the energy portion of his budget at the White House on Monday, highlighting research and development in clean energy. He also will highlight how part of the $787 billion economic stimulus package already is working to create much-needed jobs.
Obama plans to follow that with a prime-time news conference on Tuesday. The president is back in campaign mode as he stumps for a budget proposal that, so far, has faced opposition from members of both parties.
Democrats worry the plan inflates deficit spending; the Congressional Budget Office estimates Obama’s budget would generate $9.3 trillion in red ink over the next decade. Republicans say it would impose massive tax increases, including on polluters; Washington could raise billions from companies that use unclean fuels, what GOP leaders called a carbon tax.
Obama said the country must provide incentives for so-called green businesses.
“I realize there are those who say these plans are too ambitious to enact,” Obama said in his weekly video and Internet message. “To that I say that the challenges we face are too large to ignore. I didn’t come here to pass on our problems to the next president or the next generation. I came here to solve them.”
Bernstein spoke Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
Despair over financial policy
March 21, 2009
Written by Paul Krugman NY Times
The Geithner plan has now been leaked in detail. It’s exactly the plan that was widely analyzed — and found wanting — a couple of weeks ago. The zombie ideas have won.
The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system — that what we’re facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank. As Tim Duy put it, there are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets. And if we get investors to understand that toxic waste is really, truly worth much more than anyone is willing to pay for it, all our problems will be solved.
To this end the plan proposes to create funds in which private investors put in a small amount of their own money, and in return get large, non-recourse loans from the taxpayer, with which to buy bad — I mean misunderstood — assets. This is supposed to lead to fair prices because the funds will engage in competitive bidding.
But it’s immediately obvious, if you think about it, that these funds will have skewed incentives. In effect, Treasury will be creating — deliberately! — the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities. For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose. So sure, these investors will be ready to pay high prices for toxic waste. After all, the stuff might be worth something; and if it isn’t, that’s someone else’s problem.
Or to put it another way, Treasury has decided that what we have is nothing but a confidence problem, which it proposes to cure by creating massive moral hazard.
This plan will produce big gains for banks that didn’t actually need any help; it will, however, do little to reassure the public about banks that are seriously undercapitalized. And I fear that when the plan fails, as it almost surely will, the administration will have shot its bolt: it won’t be able to come back to Congress for a plan that might actually work.
What an awful mess.
Let us know your thoughts? You may leave a comment.
As reported in Huffington Post Green
Austin, Texas, is getting closer to its self-imposed goal of using more renewable energy, and creating jobs in the bargain. The Texas-sized solar plant being planned would be the largest in the Unite States, according to Austin Energy.
The Council approved an agreement under which the City’s municipally-owned electric utility, Austin Energy, will purchase all of the electricity produced over a 25-year term by a 30 megawatt (MW) solar project to be built on city-owned property located about 20 miles from downtown Austin.
Gemini Solar Development Company, LLC, one of 15 companies competing for the massive project, will construct, own and manage the solar facility. The project of photovoltaic solar panels will span approximately 320 acres, producing energy each year sufficient to power about 5,000 homes. Austin Energy will pay about $10 million per year for the power.The solar project represents a major step towards fulfilling a Council goal to develop 100 MW of solar capacity for Austin by 2020. The Council also has set a goal that 30 percent of the power delivered to customers by Austin Energy by 2020 will come from renewable resources. Construction on the project is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2010 and completed by the end of that year. The project will result in at least 600 local construction jobs.
The Austin American-Statesman said that critics remain — they’re worried about the financial
aspects of the plan, like how much the power will cost.
By unanimous vote, the council approved a partnership with Gemini Solar Development Co. to build and operate the facility and sell all its power to Austin at $10 million a year for 25 years. City officials say it would help them get closer to the city’s goal of using more renewable energy.
Other questions remain that critics said they would raise at the meeting. The city won’t say how much the power from the plant would cost, although most estimates are around 16.5 cents a kilowatt hour — more than most other types of power. Even that calculation is foggy, though, because federal tax credits could reduce the construction cost, thus making the electricity cheaper. But the city isn’t sure how much cheaper. The credits weren’t factored into Gemini Solar Development’s pitch.
$750 billion “green” investment could revive economy: U.N.
March 19, 2009
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO (Reuters) – Investments of $750 billion could create a “Green New Deal” to revive the world economy and protect the environment, perhaps aided by a tax on oil, the head of the U.N. environment agency said on Thursday.
Achim Steiner said spending should focus on five environmental sectors including improved energy efficiency for buildings and solar or wind power to create jobs, curb poverty and fight climate change.
“The opportunity must not be lost,” Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP), told Reuters of a UNEP study that will be put to world leaders meeting in London on April 2 to work out how to spur the ailing economy.
The UNEP report said investments of one percent of global gross domestic product, or about $750 billion, could bankroll a “Global Green New Deal” inspired by the “New Deal” of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt that helped end the depression of the 1930s.
Investments should be split between more energy efficient buildings, renewable energies, better transport, improved agriculture and measures to safeguard nature — such as fresh water, forests or coral reefs, it said.
Thursday’s study adds details of spending after UNEP called for a Green New Deal late last year.
Steiner also said that the world urgently needed funds to jump start a U.N. deal to fight global warming, due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December to succeed the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.
He floated the possibility of taxing oil in rich nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to help a new pact become the cornerstone of a greener economy.
“If, for argument’s sake, you were to put a five-year levy in OECD countries of $5 a barrel, you would generate $100 billion per annum. It translates into roughly 3 cents per liter,” he said.
UNNOTICED
“It would be almost, if not totally, unnoticed by the consumer,” he said, especially since oil prices have fallen from more than $140 a barrel at mid-2008 peaks to about $40.
A barrel of oil contains 158 liters and OECD consumption is about 20 billion barrels a year, he said. “This is just one example, there may be many others,” of funding, he said.
“I am concerned about the prospect of a meaningful deal in Copenhagen if there is not a significant financial package on the table,” he said. Cash would encourage poor nations to step up actions to curb rising greenhouse gas emissions.
“The argument that we cannot afford this does not, on any serious analysis, hold much water — especially given the cost to the global economy of failure to act on climate change,” he said.
Carbon markets, which could also be a source of funds to help fight climate change, were unlikely to contribute enough cash in early years of a new climate deal, he said.
Steiner said there were promising signs that economic stimulus packages by many nations, ranging from the United States to China, were being tailored to help a shift toward greener growth and away from dependence on fossil fuels.
The U.N. Climate Panel says that greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels are a prime cause of warming that will cause more heatwaves, droughts, rising sea levels and more powerful storms.
Written by Robert Redford
In his State of the Union address, President Obama noted that although America invented solar energy technology, we have fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in producing it. He is right of course.
I remember when America was leading the pack on clean energy in the 1970s. We abdicated that leadership thanks to the influence of a fossil fuel industry with deep pockets and friends in the White House. But Obama reminded us of an important aspect of the American character: ingenuity. We are a nation of innovators, and we can harness that resourcefulness again to build a better future.
I saw that ingenuity emerge three decades ago, when the promise of renewable energy became clear to many of us. We were so eager to spread the word about solar power that we created “Sun Day,” the solar equivalent of Earth Day. We had events from Maine to Chicago to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir even agreed to participate in one event.
People were just starting to get excited about pollution-free power, but then Ronald Reagan became president and took the solar panels off the White House and the policies promoting renewable energy were stripped from the books.
In 1975 I produced a short film called “The Solar Film.” The people interviewed say they like how solar power cuts down on their bills, doesn’t have to be imported, and makes them worry less about terrorists. All of those benefits remain extremely relevant today, but we have lost three decades in the effort to extend them to more Americans.
I was too early in my efforts to promote solar power, but now is the time. We are getting a second chance–another American trait. If we don’t seize this moment, we will be too late to get the competitive advantage in a global marketplace, too late for the economic dividends, and too late to stave off the worst of global warming.
The Obama administration wants to see America double our supply of renewable energy in the next three years. Many lawmakers want to pass a national renewable portfolio standard, which would require a certain percentage of our country’s electricity generation to come from clean sources like solar and wind. Congress will likely vote this year on a bill to limit global warming pollution that will dramatically expand the market for clean power. These are the kind of bold, visionary actions we need right now. I urge you to call on your representatives to support them.
In this time of economic crisis and uncertainty, I am reminded of being a child during World War II. I have no nostalgia for the turmoil and suffering of those days, but I do recall the communal effort, the sense that we all rallied around to support the greater good. Today we are trying to achieve the greater good of shared prosperity, and I believe it will be built on a clean and affordable energy economy. With enough resourcefulness, I know we can do it this time around..
New Jersey Customer-Sited Renewable Energy Rebates
March 18, 2009
Last DSIRE Review: 02/02/2009
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Summary:
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Contact:
Should you want to know more about how to incorporate Federal and State incentives into a viable alternative energy solution for your organization or business; contact Hutchinson Business Solutions. You may email george@hbsadvantage.com |
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Hutchinson Business Solutions 