NEW YORK, May 8 (Reuters) – The Trump administration has offered to place a $10 million cap on Philadelphia Energy Solutions’ biofuel blending obligations, effectively slashing the bankrupt refiner’s regulatory liability by more than 70%, according to a proposed settlement between the two parties dated earlier this week.
The deal is intended to free up more cash for the company to pay off its list of creditors, according to the filing.
It marks the second time the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump has agreed to waive significant portions of PES’s obligations under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, a law that requires refiners to blend biofuels like ethanol into the fuel pool or buy credits from those that do.
Under the agreement, PES – which entered into bankruptcy after a catastrophic fire last summer – will have to hand over 161,830,963 biofuel blending credits, called RINs, or pay up to $10 million to meet its obligations, whichever comes first, the filing said. The cost of those credits had previously been estimated at $35 million, according to court documents.
The agreement “can reduce the $35 million RINs Retirement Obligation Reserve to $10 million on the Effective Date, which makes funds available to satisfy the creditors’ claims promptly,” the filing said.
NEW JERSEY — Gov. Phil Murphy on Friday announced a major expansion of New Jersey’s coronavirus detection program to allow people without symptoms to go for tests at two sites. Murphy also announced 1,985 new cases and 162 more deaths, further continuing a downward trend .
Murphy said during a news conference that the tests for people without symptoms are set to begin at Bergen Community College in Paramus and at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel. The governor previously said New Jersey needed federal approval to allow those sites to expand testing.
Watch Murphy here:
Expanded testing will begin on Sunday at Bergen Community College at 8 a.m. and Monday at PNC Bank Arts Center at 8 a.m.
Murphy asked that asymptomatic residents should contact a health care provider to make sure “that they agree that you should be going to get a test.”
Testing will be prioritized for health care personnel, first responders, people who live in “congregant living” and people who have been in contact with those who have been diagnosed with the coronavirus, he said.
“Expanding access to testing is one of our key principles to getting New Jersey firmly back on the road to recovery,” Murphy said, adding that New Jersey has 122 testing sites overall.
Rite Aid also announced that it is allowing three stores to test people without symptoms. They are:
60 Franklin Turnpike, Waldwick
501 Clements Bridge Road, Barrington
31 Mule Road, Toms River
People can start asking their doctor about the new coronavirus saliva test, invented by Rutgers scientists and approved for at-home use.
“We’re in a much different place than we were two months ago or, frankly, even two to four weeks ago on testing,” Murphy said.
Murphy said the Paramus and Holmdel site have not “maxed out” as of late, allowing New Jersey to expand the testing. He just cautioned people to be judicious because “we don’t want the boat to be swamped.”
“This is a chance for us to dip our toe,” he saiud. “We want to try and see how it works for a few days.”
The update comes as the number of cases rose to 135,454 and deaths to 8,952.
Murphy also said he’d be “shocked” if New Jersey beaches weren’t open soon. During his Friday news conference, however, Murphy warned that if the curve of cases, which has been on a downward trend, “turn against us there’s no way can responsiblity take a step like opening beaches.”
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Gov. Phil Murphy at a briefing in Trenton on the COVID-19 pandemic
Murphy, lawmakers move quickly to remove requirement as New Jersey companies lay off large numbers of employees because of mandatory COVID-19 shutdowns
New Jersey’s push to become the first state to require large companies to pay their workers severance whenever there is a mass layoff has been put on hold temporarily during the coronavirus pandemic.
The effective date of a law signed by Gov. Phil Murphy earlier this year establishing the severance-pay requirement has been delayed until 90 days after New Jersey’s state of emergency has been lifted.
The severance-pay policy was due to go into effect in mid-July, but the extension was included in another law enacted by Murphy this month.
Business groups who raised concerns about the requirement earlier this year are praising Murphy and lawmakers for taking swift action to delay its effective date during the pandemic, when many companies are struggling to stay afloat. The delay means companies won’t have to factor in the extra liability of paying out severance packages as they craft strategies to make it through the COVID-19 epidemic.
‘A tremendous sigh of relief’
“It’s a tremendous, I would imagine, sigh of relief for employers,” said Kathleen Connelly, a partner at Westfield-based Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook & Cooper, who’s practiced employment law for more than 25 years
“Thankfully the governor recognized we are dealing with a unique situation here,” she said.
The severance-pay requirement was first drafted by lawmakers in 2018, in response to mass closures that hit the Wayne-based Toys ‘R’ Us retail chain. But it took until January 2020 for the final version to be signed into law by Murphy, and its many new employer mandates were not effective immediately.
One of those requirements is that companies with more than 100 employees will have to pay severance when a mass layoff impacts 50 or more employees. Workers will also have to be given severance pay equal to one week’s compensation for every year of service with the company.
The same law also attempts to protect workers in case their employer goes bankrupt by labeling severance as “compensation” that would be “earned in full” by an employee at the time of their termination. In addition to mandating severance, the law established guidelines for “successor employers” who may take on a company, including protecting employees against future pay cuts.
Earlier warnings about mass layoffs
The law also extended the time companies must give workers prior to a mass layoff beyond the current 60 days notice. In 2007, the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN Act, created that requirement.
Those changes were due to go into effect 180 days after the law was enacted by Murphy, which would have been July 19.
But among a series of bills that were drafted by lawmakers and signed by Murphy this month in response to the pandemic was the bill delaying the effective date of the severance-pay requirement, and several other elements of the January 2020 law.
Now, the effective date for the new employer mandates will be 90 days after an executive order signed by Murphy last month declaring a state of emergency is lifted. An exception to WARN requirements for natural disasters and emergencies was also clarified to make sure the pandemic is covered for both closures and mass layoffs.
Despite former Gov. Chris Christie’s protests to the contrary, it will be a considerable part of his legacy, forever associated with his administration
It was in some ways anticlimactic. When the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal of two former New Jersey state officials convicted for their roles in the Bridgegate scandal, the universal reaction was that both would be cleared.
Yesterday, the court made it official, pitching a 9-0 shutout and overturning the convictions of Bridget Anne Kelly, a deputy chief of staff to former Gov. Chris Christie, and Bill Baroni, former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
When the court accepted the case nearly a year ago, speculation spread quickly that it did so to bring clarity to laws governing misbehavior by public officials and viewed the Bridgegate appeals as an opportunity to warn prosecutors against bringing indictments based on political acts or motives.
Why else, the reasoning went, would the nation’s highest court agree to hear a case of relatively trivial consequence other than to use it to caution against overzealous prosecutions of individuals carrying out purely political decisions.
Not a federal crime
As Justice Elena Kagan pointed out in the ruling, while Kelly and Baroni used deception to reduce access lanes to the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee in September of 2013 as an act of political punishment, “not every corrupt act by a state or local official is a federal crime.”
Neither profited financially from the lane restrictions and, therefore, were not guilty of violating federal fraud laws, Kagan wrote.
Kelly and Baroni were convicted in November, 2016 of conspiring with former Port Authority official David Wildstein to reduce the access lanes and create a mammoth four-day traffic jam in Fort Lee to embarrass and punish the town’s Democratic mayor for his refusal to endorse Christie’s reelection.
Wildstein reached an accommodation with the U. S. Attorney’s office and testified against his co-defendants in return for a sentence of probation.
While Christie was never charged in the investigation, questions have lingered over whether he knew of the scheme either in advance or in its aftermath.
He was quick to react to the Supreme Court ruling, accusing former U. S. Attorney Paul Fishman of prosecutorial misconduct for pursuing an investigation as an act of political vindictiveness.
Christie goes after Fishman
Christie threw Fishman under the bus and backed it over him a time or two, implicitly blaming him for deliberately damaging the former governor’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, even though by all measures the effort was a long shot at best.
He decried the damage Fishman had inflicted on people dragged through the mud, neatly overlooking the reality that Christie himself was one of the principal draggers, publicly firing Kelly and denouncing her as a backstabber who betrayed him.
Kelly expressed her faith in due process had been vindicated and the court ruling had “made the case right for me.”
In a clear reference to others — likely Christie and his former deputy chief of staff Bill Stepien — Kelly said the outcome “does not absolve those who should have truly been held accountable.”
While the court ruling effectively ends the six-and-a-half year saga of Bridgegate, the scandal will forever be a part of New Jersey political lore as the quintessential example of abuse of political power and an administration run amok.
That such a hare-brained scheme could have been concocted and implemented at the highest levels of government was the result of unrestrained arrogance, a belief that power could be wielded indiscriminately and without consequence to bludgeon political opponents into compliance.
Part of the culture
Even if they mistakenly believed the plot and their involvement in it would never have been revealed, they felt comfortable that should it be uncovered, it would have been quickly dismissed as politics as usual.
Kelly and Baroni both have expressed regret over their actions, attributing them in large measure to having been caught up in a culture in which political victories became an end in themselves.
The Office of Intergovernmental Relations functioned as an arm of the Christie reelection campaign and punishing opponents was a cause for celebration.
It was, as the court said, an act of deceit and deception but not criminal. And, the proper cure for deceit and deception on the part of public officials is to be found in the ballot box, not the judicial system.
The scandal, though, begrimed everyone it touched, some, obviously, more than others.
And, Christie’s protests to the contrary, it will be a considerable part of his legacy, forever associated with his administration. Kelly and Baroni have been cleared, but the scandal will remain a part of their personal histories as well.
Carl Golden is a senior contributing analyst with the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton University.
Bridget Anne Kelly leaving the federal courthouse in Newark, NJ after one of the days of her trial
The court said there was evidence of wrongdoing but not of a federal crime.
By Adam Liptak of the New York Times May 7, 2020 Updated 11:03 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously overturned the convictions of two defendants in the “Bridgegate” scandal.
The case resulted from a decision in 2013 by associates of Chris Christie, then the governor of New Jersey, to close access lanes to the George Washington Bridge to punish a political opponent. The resulting scandal helped doom Mr. Christie’s presidential ambitions.
Closing the lanes was a wrong, the Supreme Court ruled, but not a federal crime.
The associates, Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni, were convicted of wire fraud and related federal charges for their roles in concocting a “traffic study” that caused extreme delays for motorists seeking to cross the bridge, the busiest in the world, from Fort Lee, N.J., to Manhattan.
The mayor of Fort Lee, Mark Sokolich, a Democrat, had rebuffed a request to endorse Mr. Christie, and this was his punishment.
“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Ms. Kelly, an aide to Mr. Christie, wrote in an email to officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the bridge. Mr. Christie has denied any knowledge of the scheme.
Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the court, said “the evidence the jury heard no doubt shows wrongdoing — deception, corruption, abuse of power.”
“But the federal fraud statutes at issue do not criminalize all such conduct,” she wrote. “Under settled precedent, the officials could violate those laws only if an object of their dishonesty was to obtain the Port Authority’s money or property.”
But, she wrote, “the realignment of the toll lanes was an exercise of regulatory power — something this Court has already held fails to meet the statutes’ property requirement.”
The controversy helped sink the presidential campaign of Mr. Christie in 2016, allowing Donald Trump to become the face of the anti-Washington sentiment that the governor could have otherwise tapped into.
In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Christie said he had been vindicated.
“As many contended from the beginning, and as the Court confirmed today, no federal crimes were ever committed in this matter by anyone in my administration,” he said. “It is good for all involved that today justice has finally been done.”
He went on to blame the Justice Department under President Barack Obama and the U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case, Paul J. Fishman.
He added: “This case was driven by a U.S. attorney and Justice Department in search of a predetermined and biased outcome. In recklessly pursuing that outcome, they violated the oath sworn by every member of the Department of Justice.”
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York.
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times in 2002. @adamliptak • Facebook
Additional news stories will be added as they become available
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