Russ McCutcheon

Decrease in federal funding means less help for Abilene nonprofits, low-income residents

• By Brennan K. Peel

• Abilene Reporter-News
• Posted April 23, 2012 at 9:15 pm

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April 24–CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The head of the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department believes a handful of local health departments in West Virginia — including Kanawha — are getting more than their share of federal health care funding, because they have people on the board of the nonprofit agency distributing the money.

Dr. Rahul Gupta perceives a conflict of interest in the way West Virginia Local Health Inc. wants to distribute funding to local health departments from the federal Public Health Infrastructure Grant. Of approximately $1.2 million in federal funding to West Virginia from the Affordable Health Care Act, $400,000 was distributed to the state Bureau for Public Health, then to Local Health Inc.

Kanawha-Charleston Board of Health members voted Monday to ask the state Ethics Commission about WVLHIs distribution of the federal money.

In the past, WVLHI allocated funding as the state Department of Health and Human Resources instructed, Gupta said. But under the leadership of project manager Shelly Duncan, the group has been overseeing grant allocations, he said.

The group wants to determine which health department gets what funding, provide oversight and have us execute an agreement with the nonprofit organization, Gupta said. Doing this would put us in a potential, at least the perception of a conflict of interest situation.

The conflict of interest arises, Gupta said, because Kanawha-Charleston Health Department employee Lolita Kirk serves on the WVLHI board. She and other members of the executive council for the West Virginia Association of Health Departments are automatically part of the WVLHI board, Gupta said.

All told, health departments represented by six of the eight board members ended up with half of the grant money that was to benefit 49 local health departments in West Virginia, Gupta said.

According to the matrix determined by WVLHI, the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department was to receive $44,000 of the $400,000 — the most of any local health department in the state, Gupta said.

Besides the Kanawha-Charleston department, the others that Gupta said benefited from the arrangement were in Cabell, Harrison, Berkeley, Randolph and Boone counties.

On April 19, Gupta sent a letter asking to withdraw from the WVLHI grant process. That day, the WVLHI upped the departments funding from $44,000 to $66,000, Gupta said. Kirk said she had also hinted to the board during a meeting that day that the Kanawha health department might pull out of the process.

On Monday afternoon, Duncan denied that WVLHI was doing anything unethical.

I do not believe that there is any conflict of interest, Duncan said. Until I have a better understanding at whats happened at the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department, I dont want to make any further comment.

Duncan declined to describe the process used for the distribution of funds to local health departments.

In an April 9 letter to WVLHI President Bill Kearns, Gupta asked who determined how the federal money would be distributed, and if WVLHI board members approved the numbers.

Gupta said he did not receive a response. He reviewed minutes of the WVHLI meetings to determine that board members had initially voted to become a pass-through organization for the funding.

At another meeting they awarded funding to health departments without voting, and at a third they voted for which health departments would receive extra funding, Gupta said. Kirk said she abstained from that vote, citing a conflict of interest.

Having gotten no response from the board president, Gupta withdrew the health departments participation from the grant process in his April 19 letter. The board unanimously supported Guptas withdrawal during Mondays meeting.

On Monday, Kearns said he didnt believe his groups funding allocations were unethical. He said WVLHI withheld some funding from the grant for auditing and accounting services, and for Duncans salary.

Gupta said WVLHI using the money for accounting and auditing, would be unnecessary, because the local health departments would have to do their own accounting.

On Monday, the Kanawha-Charleston health board also voted to apply for the grant funding directly through the state Bureau for Public Health instead of going through WVLHI.

The citizens of Kanawha County will suffer if they do not provide us this funding, Gupta said. [The] funding is not just for us but the citizens of West Virginia.

Calls to the state Department of Health and Human Resources, which includes the Bureau of Public Health, were not immediately returned Monday afternoon.

Reach Lori Kersey at lori.kersey@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1240.

This article was distributed through the NewsCred Smartwire.

Original article  The Charleston Gazette, W.Va. 2012

Transportation leaders at Monday?s annual Earth Day Summit, organized by the Illinois tollway, had answers.

But whether they possess the collective will and clout to make some of the controversial funding options happen in the next year is uncertain.

?If we take collective responsibility, we will get something done,? Illinois State Toll Highway Authority Chair Paula Wolff said. Her remarks wrapped up a forum with attendance from Illinois Department of Transportation Secretary Ann Schneider, plus leaders of the tollway, Regional Transportation Authority, Metra, Pace, Chicago Transportation Authorities and Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.

Some of the measures officials contemplated included raising fares and gas taxes. An 8-cent hike in the state motor fuel tax that increases with inflation could generate $19 billion by 2040, CMAP estimates. The state gas tax is now at 19 cents a gallon.

Other alternatives are: tolling existing roads; ?congestion pricing,? meaning charging extra for traveling during rush hour; raising parking fees across the region or instituting new parking fees where they haven?t existed before; and tying tolls to the rate of inflation.

The key is selling the public on the need for transit and highway improvements, officials said.

?People have concerns about money not being spent well,? Wolff said, ?(they wonder) are pensions too rich, are bus routes running on empty, is the cost of construction greater than it should be??

?We need to do a better job of creating support for roads and transit in the region,? RTA Chairman John S. Gates Jr. said.

With scant federal or state dollars, the region needs a unified approach to asking Washington and Springfield for money, leaders agreed.

That means less of Chicago and the surrounding municipalities looking out for their individual fiefdoms ? ?there clearly has to be a regional solution, we can?t be isolated,? Gates said.

Spring meetings of the International Monetary Funds board of
governors are usually unmomentous affairs.

The big IMF annual meeting draws the world financial elite every
fallto eat quality hors d oeuvres and fret expensively about
the dire times ahead. The spring follow-up is generally dry and
administrative with a lot of unfathomable rhetoric about
contribution quotas.

Not so this year. At the spring confab this past weekend, IMF
director Christine Lagarde, that telegenic six-foot French lady you
may have noticed from time to time, pulled off a
financial-diplomatic coup by squeezing $430 billion more in
emergency funds out of the 100-plus countries that are members of
the organization.

But the real news was who gave the money – the four BRIC
countries and probably some other emerging markets – and who is
likely to use it: sputtering, debt-logged European nations.

This amounts to an historical turnabout that investors,
particularly US investors isolated by their two vast oceans, do
not quite get yet: The big emerging market states are the ones on
solid economic and, with some caveats, political grounds, at the
moment.

The developed world is staring into the abyss with bond
investors eyeing the exits and national leaders falling like
dominoes. Two more European governments shook over the past two
days as Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte resigned with his
whole cabinet, and French president Nicolas Sarkozy seemed headed
to defeat based on first-round election results.

The IMF was founded after World War II, originally to stabilize
currency exchange rates with market interventions. Its mandate
greatly expanded during the Latin debt crisis of the 1980s. The
Fund became lender of last resort to bankrupt and near-bankrupt
developing countries.

As a funding pre-condition it aggressively pushed them toward
the Washington consensus, a menu of fiscal austerity and
so-called structural reforms designed by the rich Western world
ostensibly for the benefit of its errant emerging brothers.
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt got off one of his few good comic
lines when he dubbed the IMF the International Misery Fund.

Yet the IMF medicine worked eventually, by and large. Long-time
shaky creditors like Brazil, Russia and Turkey slashed expenditures
and built budgetary and currency surpluses. China and India pared
their massive bureaucracies (structural reform) and unleashed
vertiginous growth. Currencies prone to adding zeroes in the past
now have to be checked because of their market strength.

The rich countries who prescribed these tough remedies neglected
to treat themselves however.

Fast forward to 2012. Broad swathes of Europe are eyeing
international financial hand-outs. Former supplicants from the
emerging markets have cash to put into the kitty. The donor list
for that $430 billion Lagarde just raised is formally a secret.

But some elementary arithmetic indicates a big contribution from
the developing world. European states themselves put up a reported
$200 billion, Japan $60 billion more. The US demurred, officially
on the grounds that Europe can dig its own way out of its debt
crisis.

That leaves a hefty $170 billion unaccounted for. Most of it
likely came from the BRIC nations, who are not specifying any
numbers but are vocally grumbling about taking a few of Europes
eight existing seats on the IMFs 24-member board of directors.
Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said he presumed his
country, China, Russia and Brazil will contribute to increase the
fund on fulfillment of certain conditions.

What all this means for investors is that one big element of
presumed emerging markets risk – the so-called sovereign risk that
bonds will default, currencies blow up, and governments collapse
without much warning – is increasingly a thing of the past.

The big developing countries proved more resilient on these
macro indicators (currency possibly excepted) than the developed
world after the 2008 crisis, and investors were rewarded by
tremendous gains in their securities in 2009-10.

A second form of peril, the governance risk that derives from
lower-quality regulation, more corruption and less transparency in
emerging markets is alive and well. A case in point is todays
crash in the shares of Wal-Mart de Mexico

(

WMMVF

,
quote

), the local subsidiary of the American retailing colossus, after a
New York Times

expose on the chains entrenched pattern of bribing Mexican
officials – and US executives pattern of covering it up. But
that is another story.

Posted at 11:26 PM ET, 04/23/2012

TheWashingtonPost

Bike trail and school funding top priorities at Manassas budget meeting
By Jeremy Borden

After a Manassas budget process that saw controversy over funding to

Brian Price/For Fairfax County Times Falls Church resident Pete Beers traverses a section of the mountain bike trail at Fountainhead Regional Park on Sunday. Manassas is hoping to build its own trails but it is proving controversial.
(Brian Price)

non-profits, city schools and a bike trail extension, residents weighed in on the issues Monday at City Hall.

The biggest issues that emerged were the Winter’s Branch bike trail, which some area residents oppose, and schools funding — particularly dollars to replace the aging Baldwin Middle School and build a new facility to house school administration in one central office.

On the bike trail issue, which dominated the seats at City Hall, many residents said they wanted the project out of the budget once and for all while some said the project made sense for the city’s walkers and bikers. The trail is a 2,600-foot extension of an existing trail and would connect the Georgetown South and Wellington communities, allowing users to access Old Town Manassas without crossing onto the street.

In March, the issue split City Council, 3-3, and Mayor Harry “Hal” Parrish II (R) had broken the tie by voting against it. But at a budget session in April, City Council member Mark D. Wolfe’s (R) “no” became a tentative “yes.”

He asked city staff to work with residents to find a less expensive and controversial plan. Council members J. Steven Randolph (I), Andrew L. Harrover (R) and Sheryl Bass also backed that plan.

But that hasn’t sat well with residents of the Wellington community, where the bike plan is proposed.

“On March 5, we thought we successfully killed and buried this project,” said Nina Gribov, a city resident. Part of the proposed trail would run through her property, she said. “On April 11 it was resurrected from the dead.”

Residents say they worry about increased crime as a result of the trail, while city officials say that there is no indication bike trails in the city or elsewhere see more problems.

A minority of others were more enthusiastic about the bike trail. “This gives a way to go from one end of Prince William County to the other and enjoy historic Manassas,” said Rick Holt, a Bristow resident who bikes throughout the area.

Wolfe said in an interview that the extension has been in long-term plans for “a long, long time” and his vote directed city officials to come up with a better alternative before more money is spent.

“I’m not smart enough to presuppose an answer,” he said.

Another meeting on the issue is scheduled for Thursday at 5:30 p.m. on the second floor of City Hall.

Other teachers and parents told City Council they have made the wrong decision in blocking funds for a new Baldwin Elementary School. The city School Board has unanimously backed a new building — as well as a new building to house the school’s administration.

City Council has to approve those funds and has not done so.

Tim Oshiki, a parent of a second grader at Baldwin, said city leaders were ”putting a band-aid on a gun-shot wound” with continuing repairs to the aging structure, which teachers said has problems with air conditioning and basic maintenance.

“If we fail on this now … the cost is going squarely on the shoulders of our children,” Oshiki said.

Wolfe, who has campaigned on schools issues, said he would back a plan for new facilities if he was presented with a detailed plan from the School Board rather than a request for $3 million without many details. “We need a comprehensive plan to deal with our facility issues,” he said.

Councilors have tentatively backed a $1.19 real-estate tax rate, which would result in a $96.4 million general fund budget. The rate also means an average tax bill of $2,934, a $12 average residential increase for city residents.

The final budget is expected to be adopted in May.

By Jeremy Borden
 | 
11:26 PM ET, 04/23/2012

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Housing tops Alexandria issues in 2012, mayor says

Reena Rose Sibayan/The Jersey JournalActing Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf, right, looks on while Gov. Chris Christie speaks in this file photo. The state has been awarded $38 million in Race to the Top funding to bolster Christies education agenda.

By Christopher Weaver

Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) is calling for an inquiry into whether South Carolina officials used funding from the health-overhaul law to block the law?s central plank from taking hold in the palmetto state.

At issue is $1 million the federal government gave to the state to plan its own health-insurance exchange, the online shopping centers set to take effect in 2014. Though the state took the money, Republican Gov. Nikki Haley, a health-law opponent, said months ago that South Carolina doesn?t plan to create the exchange.

The Post and Courier, a Charleston, SC, newspaper, reported last week that Gov. Haley wrote in an email to key members of the planning committee financed by the grant that their goal should be to find a way to ?NOT create a state exchange.? Under the law, the federal government will build exchanges in states that choose to skip the work.

A spokesman for Gov. Haley shot back yesterday that the accusation is ?a joke.?

But Sen. Harkin, a strong supporter of the law, isn?t laughing. He?s asked a federal inspector general to look into whether the state diverted health-law implementation grants to thwart the law.

Gov. Haley?s reported emails raise questions in South Carolina and Washington about whether the months-long deliberation over exchange planning, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, was a charade.

South Carolina officials say they used the money to do real work, and they?re opening up the books to show it. This morning, an official in the state?s Department of Insurance sent the Wall Street Journal a list of expenses, ranging from $581.39 worth of office chairs to a $2,300.14 Dell laptop and a $167,370.68 consulting bill.

In all, South Carolina expects to spend $305,000 out of the $1 million available for exchange planning, according to an estimate that includes expenses not yet paid. The remaining balance will stay in the hands of the federal health department.

An expense report published on the planning committee?s website shows the group had spent only $109,000 through the end of November.

Anthony Keck, the director of the state?s health department, said in an interview that the committee used the money to explore options to make buying insurance easier beyond what the federal health law requires. The consulting fees ? the largest portion of the state?s planning tab ? went, for instance, to University of South Carolina researchers who analyzed insurance coverage rates in the state and held focus groups on exchanges.

Gov. Haley ?could have said, ?Don?t even do this,? ? Mr. Keck said. ?But, she said, let?s go forward and use this as an opportunity to understand the law and the risk. She wanted us to look for alternatives.?

Funding and Such

Some years ago, Senator John Kerry voted for the Iraq war funding before he voted against it. He got in a lot of trouble because, in the end, his proposal would have funded the war, but in a different way than the bill that was passed, but people took that as him being against the funding. Its hard to keep up with that sort of story line. Its the sort of story that gets caught in the current and carried downstream no matter how hard you paddle upstream.

The Republicans are in the same, swift, boat now. They too are in favor of the policy (extending the payroll tax holiday), for even longer than the Democratic proposal. But because they want it to work differently, they are getting accused of being against the policy altogether. Now, some of them are against it, but theres a majority of both parties sufficient to pass it, if they could work out how to pay for it.

The only difference with Kerry is that there was a majority of both parties who got it passed without him, so the policy moved forward without jeopardizing the timeline. But the timeline is upon us now, and the House Republicans had no more time to get a better bill now.

Of course, this bill lasts only two months. I wonder if this wasnt planned by Boehner, frankly: he waits for the conservatives of his party to go home, he strikes a deal to pass it without them, they return next year angry and ready to fight, and they get a better deal for the remainder of the year. People are saying Boehner and the Republicans lost big here, but Im not so sure. Yes, they take a small and temporary hit from people who are lied to into believing that they were against the payroll tax extension, but if they can pull off a better bill in two months, that will be quickly forgotten.

Its funny to me that so many people are accusing Boehner of being short-sighted, but they themselves cant see that just two months down the road, Boehner has an opportunity to turn it all around.

Cross-posted on lt;pudge/*gt;.

Posted by pudge at December 23, 2011
12:42 PM | Email This

An emission-reducing raisin tray burning system, a natural gas conversion kit for locomotive engines, and an all-electric agricultural sprayer are just a few of the new technologies being developed with the goal of improving air quality in the Central Valley.
The San Joaquin Valley Air Districts Governing Board granted $2,947,694 to 11 projects targeted at reducing the Valleys air quality emissions through new technology. The board also authorized an additional $3 million for an additional round of funding to bring more technology-advancement entrepreneurs in the Valley.
The innovations are part of the districts Technology Advancement Program. TAP is a strategic approach to encouraging innovation and development of new emission reduction technologies. It consists of ongoing reviews of new concepts and collaborations and provides funding for qualified research and development.
The latest round of competitive proposals resulted in numerous submissions. District staff carefully evaluated the proposals for a variety of criteria, including relevance to attainment plans, co-benefits, cost-effectiveness, funding requested and leveraging, and project readiness. Funding was recommended for 11.
We are encouraged by the response we received to this funding availability, said Seyed Sadredin, the districts executive director and air pollution control officer. Not only are these new projects innovations that will help clean up the Valley, but they are also vital to supporting the Valleys technology development community and economic vitality.
Emission-reducing efforts are of vital importance to the Valley, because the area has the unfortunate distinction of having some of the poorest air quality in the nation, according to the American Lung Association. Air pollution can cause respiratory and heart problems, especially among children, the elderly and those with existing health concerns.
The California Department of Public Health reports that San Joaquin Valley residents experience three times Californias state average for asthma attacks and five times the national average for asthma attacks.
The newly funded projects and amounts are:
bull; $350,000 for Pure Power Technologies proposal to demonstrate a non-urea NOx reduction retrofit system for diesel trucks;
bull; $300,000 for California Bioenergys proposal to demonstrate advanced two-stage controls to a biogas engine system to achieve near-zero NOx;
bull; $258,000 for US Hybrid Corp.s proposal to demonstrate a plug-in hybrid wheel loader in a dairy application, and $292,830 for their demonstration of a plug-in hybrid propane/electric work truck;
bull; $75,580 for Energy Conversions Inc.s proposal to demonstrate a natural gas conversion kit for two-stroke diesel locomotive engines;
bull; $370,534 for Electricore Inc.s proposal to demonstrate a fully autonomous agricultural sprayer based on a zero-emission, all-electric vehicle platform;
bull; $28,250 for Sun-Maid Growers of Californias proposal to demonstrate an emission-reducing raisin tray burning system;
bull; $300,000 for Thermatas proposal to demonstrate a concentrating solar steam system to offset boiler fuel consumption and emissions;
bull; $250,000 for Leva Energy Inc.s proposal to demonstrate a power-generating burner that recovers wasted energy through a microturbine;
bull; $242,500 for the City of Mantecas proposal to demonstrate a serial hybrid hydraulic refuse truck;
bull; $230,000 for the Association of Compost Producers proposal to demonstrate a positively aerated static compost pile system;
bull; $350,000 for PGamp;E Fleet Engineerings proposal to demonstrate an extended range electric drive Class 6 bucket truck with electric worksite operation capacity.

To contact Sabra Stafford, e-mail sstafford@turlockjournal.com or call 634-9141 ext. 2002.

Unesco cuts funding for Palestinian youth magazine over Hitler praise
Unesco, the UNs cultural agency, is to pull funding for a Palestinian youth magazine that published an article suggesting admiration for Adolf Hitler.