Finance & Business World

When word got out recently that a small town in California was paying its city manager nearly $800,000, the backlash was swift. Residents were furious and national news outlets jumped on the story, putting salaries for city officials under scrutiny across the country.

But, compensation experts say local city officials are not being overpaid.

In Dayton, for example, City Manager Tim Riordan is the highest-paid employee, earning about $145,000 annually. Among all city of Dayton's 1,300 full-time workers, only 20 earn more than $100,000 a year including Riordan; Stanley Early, the deputy city manager; Cheryl Garrett, finance director; Shelly Dickstein, assistant city manager-strategic development; and police chief Richard Biehl.

The national average salary for city managers salaries runs about $106,000. But, in cities with a population between 100,000 and 250,000 - Dayton has 153,000 - the average city manager makes more than $183,000, according to the International City/County Management Association. The average salary for full-time employees at the city of Dayton is about $55,000. Then average person in the Dayton area made $35,344 last year, according to federal statistics.

Click here for database of Dayton city employees that can be searched by name or salary range.

Click here for database of Springfield city employees that can be searched by name or salary range.

Michele Frisby, a spokesperson for the association, said the California case has forced city leaders across the U.S. to defend, or at least explain, their salaries.

"The ridiculous salary that was being paid to the Bell (Calif.) city manager is so unusual; most salaries are in-line with standards for the profession and are certainly not that competitive to private sector or they don't surpass private sector salaries."

When asked about Riordan's salary, Frisby said "he's certainly not getting overpaid."

Riordan - who volunteered to take a 3 percent pay cut shortly before the California issue surfaced during the first week of August - said that situation was a rare example of abuse; that pay for top city officials around the country was not out of whack.

"That is an extreme anomaly," Riordan said. "How the heck did they get that passed?"

As for Dayton city employee salaries, Riordan said "good people cost money," and the city needs good people at a difficult time that includes shrinking tax revenue. Attracting and retaining good people, he said, means paying market-rate for employees, something that applies to any organization, including the city. To bolster his point that Dayton salaries are reasonable, Riordan pointed to local companies where he said executive salaries compared to the lowest-paid workers typically run at a 20-to-1 ratio or greater. At the city, he said that ratio is about 5-to-1.

"Look around at some of the private organizations in this community and tell me that anybody else could match us," he said.

Riordan was appointed to serve as interim city manager in October last year, filling the void left by Rashad Young who took the same job in Greensboro, N.C. Since then, Riordan - who worked for the city from 1972 to 1998, including as interim city manager in 1994 - has since been named the city manager. Young started in Greensboro with a salary of $179,500.

In the city of Springfield, which has about 62,000 residents, Jim Bodenmiller makes about $112,000 annually as city manager. Among the city's 300 employees, only three earn more than $100,000 a year including the city's law director, Jerome Strozdas, and deputy law director, Andrew Burkholder.

Bodenmiller said pay city leader positions in the region is not out of line. However, the trick for Springfield and other cities is maintaining the balance of paying well for talent while being a good steward of public funds.

"Like it or not, governments are like large businesses in many respects and there's a lot of responsibility in those positions," he said.

As union contracts expired in Springfield - both in this year and last year - workers have taken zero pay increases for one- or two-year periods and nonunion workers got no bump in pay this year or last year. Bodenmiller said the city also scaled back or modified benefits, whenever possible, to save money.

"We realize we're no different than any other business, we're struggling to make ends meet," he said.

Dayton city salaries, in general, Riordan said, have been flat for several years as employees have taken a combination of cuts, zero increases and days without pay. And during the past decade, the city has cut about 600 jobs.

"Everybody has done something," he said. "You've got to be real sensitive to (the issue of city salaries) … because this community has been hit hard."

Do you think local city officials are overpaid? Click here to vote now.

Source

No faxing fast cash advance gets you cash fast and easily.

For the second month in a row, the U.S. economy shed jobs as the government continued to unload census workers, offsetting disappointing gains in private business hiring.

The Labor Department on Friday reported a net loss of 131,000 jobs in July, an improvement from the revised loss of 221,000 jobs in June.

The loss was due mostly to the end of 143,000 temporary census jobs in the month, but hiring by businesses was also weak, as those employers added only 71,000 jobs in July.

"The job market has lost steam and remains lethargic," said Sung Won Sohn, economics professor at Cal State University Channel Islands.

Businesses have now added jobs in every month so far this year, a total of 630,000 positions. But that works out to an anemic 90,000 a month. There needs to be an overall gain of about 150,000 jobs per month just to keep pace with population growth.

And private sector job growth seems to be losing ground. The modest gain of 71,000 jobs in business hiring was up from even weaker revised readings for May and June, but was still well below the nearly 200,000 monthly gains in March and April, when the labor market appeared set to turn the corner.

"The private sector is just not strong enough," said Tig Gilliam, CEO of Adecco Group North America, a unit of the world’s largest employment staffing firm. "Companies are still cautious on the hiring front. They’re taking a long time to make decisions. All of that suggests continued uncertainty and slow improvement."

The overall number was worse than the loss of 87,000 jobs that economists surveyed by Briefing.com had predicted.

More pain ahead

The job losses from census jobs ending are likely to abate in the coming months. There are only 196,000 temporary census workers still on the job and they’ll be phased out mostly over the next two months.

But the outlook for private sector hiring remains weak. A restocking in inventories that helped lift hiring earlier this year has mostly come to an end and retailers are likely to keep shelves and staff lean going into an uncertain holiday shopping period.

Temporary workers, often taken as a leading indicator of future hiring by businesses who use them ahead of expanding their permanent staff, has been trending down for the last nine months and fell to a loss of 5,600 jobs this month, the first decline in that reading since September payday loans.

Public sector job losses weren’t limited to temporary jobs, as government jobs outside of census fell by 59,000 in the month, most being cut from state and local governments facing budget problems.

The Obama administration said the loss of state and local government jobs, and the weak private sector hiring, show that more needs to be done.

"We have made substantial progress from the days when employment was declining by 750,000 a month," said a statement from Council of Economic Advisers Chair Christina Romer. "But, today’s employment report emphasizes just how important the additional jobs measures before Congress are."

But Republicans claim the weak employment report showed that the economic policies of the Obama administration have failed.

"For all of the effort being expended to convince Americans that their policies have ‘funded’ or ‘created and saved’ new jobs, the sobering reality is 18 months after the stimulus was signed into law, our economy is still hemorrhaging jobs," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Unemployment persists

The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.5% in June. Economists had expected the jobless rate to edge up to 9.6%. But that was mostly because of 381,000 workers who stopped looking for work in recent weeks, and were therefore no longer counted as part of the labor force.

That jump in discouraged workers may have been partly due to the loss of extended unemployment benefits for many jobless during the month. Without the incentive of having to look for work to collect benefits, many workers simply gave up looking.

The percentage of the population with jobs fell for the third straight month to 58.4% and is now approaching the 26-year low in that reading reached in December.

There was some good news buried in the report, at least for those with jobs. The average hourly work week increased 0.1 hours to 33.5, suggesting that workers who had their hours reduced were being called back to work full time. The number of part-time workers who would prefer to work full time fell by 98,000 to 8.5 million. 

Source

Stop the guess work, get your 100% free credit score and report today and know exactly what's on all three of your free credit reports

Insituform Technologies Inc. said its second-quarter profit more than doubled to $15.78 million compared to $6.55 million in last year’s quarter, thanks in part to the impact of recent acquisitions.

For the quarter ended June 30, the company reported that its revenue rose 26 percent to $230.19 million compared to nearly $183.2 million in last year’s quarter. The increase primarily was driven by 38.8 percent growth in its Energy and Mining segment, the company said.

Joe Burgess, president and CEO, said in a statement that the acquisitions of the Bayou Cos. and Corrpro Cos. were more than 20 percent accretion to Insituform’s earnings per share this quarter, and slightly accretive for the last 12 months. Insituform bought the Bayou Cos. for $125 million in February 2009 and Corrpro Cos. Inc. for $92 million in March 2009 Faxless payday loans.

“Each of our business segments are poised to make even more progress in the second half of 2010, with market conditions continuing to improve on a global basis, coupled with our strong backlog position and order prospects,” Burgess said.

Insituform’s total contract backlog was $475.2 million as of June 30, representing a 2.5 percent increase from Dec. 31, 2009, and a 2.8 percent increase from June 30, 2009.

The Chesterfield, Mo.-based company (Nasdaq: INSU), led by President and Chief Executive Joe Burgess, rehabilitates sewer and water pipes. The company landed $86 million worth of stimulus work last year and expects to tap into another $86 million of stimulus work this year.

Source

Commercial air traffic at Portland International Airport dipped .4 percent in June to 1.2 million over the same period a year earlier. For the year, traffic is off 2.7 percent.

International traffic is posting the biggest declines. The number of international passengers moving through PDX was down 5.7 percent in June and is off 19.1 percent for the year. Much of that can be attributed to Deutsche Lufthansa AG’s decision to ground its six-year-old Portland-to-Frankfurt nonstop service last September. Domestic traffic was down just .4 percent for June and is off 2.1 percent year-to-date.

Of PDX’s big three, only Alaska Airlines saw increased traffic from a year ago, with 179,280 passengers in June compared to 151,175 last year no faxing payday loan. Seattle-based Horizon Air, PDX’s busiest carrier, reported a 6.6 percent decline in year-over-year monthly traffic, while traffic on Southwest Airlines of Dallas dropped 4.1 percent.

Freight moved by PDX carriers was up 5 percent from a year ago to 16,204 in June, though for the year to date the number dropped 6.1 percent to 204,485.

Nationally, U.S. carriers are faring well. The Air Transport Association of America reports that passenger revenue was up 25 percent in June over a year earlier, the sixth consecutive month of revenue growth.

Source

Hewlett-Packard Co. said on Monday that its Snapfish online photo unit has acquired the video technology platform of startup Motionbox Inc.

Palo Alto-based HP (NYSE:HPQ) didn't disclose the financial terms of the deal.

New York-based video site Motionbox has more than 2.8 million members. HP said Motionbox members can continue to post, share and edit videos on the current website until Aug same day payday loans. 10.

San Francisco-based Snapfish, which has more than 85 million registered users, was acquired by HP in 2005.

Source

As public outrage over Wall Street bonuses fades a bit in the United States, the European Parliament on Wednesday approved tough new rules that limit bankers’ bonuses and align compensation with long-term financial performance.

The new rules are more rigid than any steps the U.S. has taken to regulate pay practices within the financial industry and highlights a growing divide between U.S. and E.U. policy on this key issue.

Under the new rules, upfront cash bonuses to European bankers will be capped at 30% of the total bonus, and 20% for "particularly large" bonuses. The rules also require that up to 60% of any bonus be deferred for at least three years and allow for part of it to be recovered if investments underperform. At least half must be paid in "contingent capital" and shares.

The rules are subject to a vote by the European Council and would go into effect next year. They would apply to U.S. banks based in Europe as well.

"These tough new rules on bonuses will transform the bonus culture and end incentives for excessive risk taking," said Arlene McCarthy, a British member of the European Parliament who championed the rules. "Since banks have failed to reform we are doing it for them."

By contrast, the financial reform bill passed by the House last month does not contain provisions that would cap bankers’ bonuses. President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law this month assuming it also passes in the Senate.

The bill does require industry regulators to draft their own set of rules aimed at eliminating risky pay practice among banks and other financial firms. The Federal Reserve, in conjunction with other regulators, has already issued guidance along those lines.

In addition, the bill would impose new rules for how all publicly-traded companies pay top executives. Shareholders will be given a nonbinding advisory vote on how top executives are paid while in office. Shareholders also get a nonbinding advisory vote on executives’ outsized severance payments, or so-called "golden parachutes."

Critics say more needs to be done to limit the size of Wall Street bonuses, arguing that skewed compensation practices helped bring on the financial crisis pay day advance.

"The problem isn’t only how pay is structured," said Sara Anderson, an executive compensation expert at the Institute for Policy Studies. "It’s the size of pay that is still an issue."

Scott Talbott, head lobbyist for the Financial Services Round Table, supported steps to limit excessive risk taking, but said imposing uniform caps on bonuses across the industry is a mistake.

"Placing a hard cap on compensation is the wrong approach. The problem is that each employee and each company is different," he said. "One size doesn’t fit all. U.S. policymakers are right on this."

He added that many financial services companies in the United States and abroad have already taken steps to ensure that compensation practices are aligned with the interests of customers and shareholders.

Still, the piecemeal approach to regulating Wall Street bonuses in the United States is surprising given the wave of public anger that developed in the wake of the financial crisis.

The issue came to a head in March 2009 after AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) paid employees a total of $165 million in bonuses despite the fact that the giant insurance company had to be bailed out by taxpayers.

But the groundswell of anger and frustration gave way to a sense of "disempowerment" as the debate over Wall Street reform dragged on, Anderson said.

In addition, the health care reform bill and the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has also diverted some public rage from the financial services sector.

That could change, Anderson said, as the economic recovery falters and the gap between rich and poor Americans continues to widen.

"With the increasing disconnect between the people at the bottom and the people at the top, the public outrage factor could increase," she said. 

Source

International banking veteran Peter J. Phillips has joined the board of directors at Miami-based Pacific National Bank.

The United Kingdom native has worked for Lloyds Bank in New York and Miami for nearly 35 years, including as executive VP and regional director for the bank’s Miami division. He holds a B.A. and M.A. from Oxford University’s New College.

Owned by the government of Ecuador, Pacific National Bank has been under the scrutiny of U.S. regulators for its loan problems and compliance with anti-money laundering laws. Several board members resigned in 2009.

Phillips will chair the bank’s audit committee cash advance flexible payments.

“Peter Phillips’ managerial success over 30 years, broad experience with regulators and deep knowledge of the auditing process and risk-based management will make him a valuable contributor to our board,” stated Carlos Fernandez-Guzman, who joined Pacific National Bank as CEO in April. “His long experience in international wealth management provides invaluable insight into better serving existing and potential customers.”

Source

A Virginia real estate investment group has paid $4.4 million for the troubled River Haven Apartments complex in north Raleigh.

TGM Realty Investors, a subsidiary of Richmond, Va.-based Thalhimer Real Estate, purchased the property in early June after the property had gone into foreclosure January. The Community Investment Corporation of the Carolinas had taken over the property for $4 million in January. CICCAR is a consortium of 115 bank members that provide debt financing for affordable housing properties. It is a subsidiary of the North Carolina Bankers Association.

River Haven was built in 2000 with 112 two- and three-bedroom apartment units on 10.5 acres. It is located at 9310 River Haven Place off of Capital Boulevard in Raleigh. The property had a tax value of $6 million, according to Wake County records.

It is the third apartment complex TGM Realty has purchased in North Carolina. It also owns the Stonewood Apartments and Crystal Village Apartments in Durham.

Source

With the economy stabilizing, things appear to be getting back to normal.

That’s bad news.

I’m talking about the results of the latest Retirement Confidence Survey, a comprehensive, long-running study about Americans’ attitudes toward retirement and preparedness for it.

The study, now on its 20th year, has been conducted from the beginning by the research firm Mathew Greenwald and Associates for the nonprofit Employee Benefit Research Institute, allowing for meaningful year-to-year comparisons.

This year’s survey, based on telephone interviews conducted in January, found that the record-low confidence levels during the past two years appear to have bottomed out.

"Americans’ attitudes toward retirement have clearly tracked the economy the last couple of years, and that seems to be the case for 2010," said Jack VanDerhei, EBRI’s research director and co-author of the study.

For example, the percentage of American workers who say they’re very confident they’ll have enough money for a comfortable retirement has stabilized at 16 percent, up from the 20-year low of 13 percent in 2009. (The numbers are statistically equivalent, however, given the survey’s margin of error of 3 percentage points.) And 29 percent are very confident they’ll have enough for at least basic expenses in retirement, up from 25 percent in 2009.

Altogether, 54 percent of American workers are at least somewhat confident of having a comfortable retirement, same as in 2009, and 75 percent are at least somewhat confident they’ll be able to cover at least their basic expenses, compared to 74 percent in 2009.

The stabilizing numbers are hardly reason to celebrate, however. The way I see it, they merely reflect again the false confidence that had characterized survey findings consistently before the economic downturn.

"It would be encouraging to find that Americans have bolstered their retirement confidence by improving their preparations for retirement, but that may not be the case," said the study, titled "Confidence Stabilizing, But Preparations Continue to Erode." In fact, as the study reports, "the retirement preparations reported by some workers are eroding, leaving them less prepared for retirement."

For example, fewer American workers say they and/or their spouse have saved for retirement at some point (69 percent, down from 75 percent in 2009). Fewer say that they and/or their spouse are currently saving for retirement (60 percent, down from 65 percent in 2009).

A "distressing" number of Americans have little or no savings, VanDerhei said, with 27 percent (up from 20 percent in 2009) saying they have less than $1,000. More than half of American workers (54 percent) say the total value of their household savings and investments, excluding their primary home and any defined benefit plan, is less than $25,000. (In a concession to reality, 24 percent said they had postponed their planned retirement date in the past year, mostly for money-related reasons).

American workers also are "clueless" about savings goals, the study found. Fewer than half (46 percent) say they and/or their spouse have tried to calculate how much money they’ll need for a comfortable retirement.

And yet doing so (for help, see website www.choosetosave.org) can yield enormous benefits. Rather than being discouraged by the results and giving up savings, Americans who do a retirement-needs calculation tend to be more confident and better prepared for retirement — and more likely to take action to improve their situation, the studies have found.

Source

General Motors reported $3.4 billion loss in the fourth quarter of 2009, but is on track to possibly return to profitability in 2010, the company said Wednesday.

Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell, who joined the company earlier this year, stopped short of forecasting a profit this year, but said that results in the recently-completed first quarter, which will be reported in May, and the outlook for sales the rest of the year gives the company hope that it is close to returning to the black for the first time since early 2007.

He points out that much of the fourth-quarter loss was due to one-time items, such as a $2.6 billion settlement loss related to the UAW retiree medical plan. Without those one-time items, the loss would have been closer to $600 million in the quarter.

"The underlying profitability is not as bad as it would seem," he said. "We don’t need to make that much of an improvement to get to profitability."

Still, even without those one-time items, the results at GM were far worse than rivals Ford Motor (F, Fortune 500) and Toyota Motor (TM), which both reported profits in the period due to the improving auto sales.

Mike Boudreau, a director at Michigan-based turnaround firm O’Keefe & Associates, said though the loss might seem disappointing, he chalks it up to closing the books on a very difficult year of transition.

"I’m not too focused on 2009; even if they had posted a profit in the quarter, I don’t know if it would have meant much," he said.

He agreed with Liddell’s assessment that making money at some point in 2010 should be in reach.

"They’re going to get a lift from the improvement in the U.S. economy," he said. "I don’t know if they’ll make money for the entire year, but I think they’ll be able to break through and turn a profit for at least a couple of quarters."

The fourth-quarter loss came despite a 15% jump in the number of vehicles sold in the quarter compared to a year earlier, and a 10% cut in the number of worldwide employees. The improved sales and lower labor costs allowed it to trim its losses, though. In the fourth quarter of 2008, the pre-bankruptcy GM lost $9.6 billion.

Technically, GM’s financial results were not comparable to earlier periods as they were reported under what is known as "fresh start accounting" associated with the company emerging from bankruptcy in July of last year.

The accounting process is seen as an important first step to GM’s plans to put its bankruptcy behind it and once again offer shares to the public. Taxpayers own about a 60% stake in GM and will not be able to get back most of the $50 billion given to the company to see it through bankruptcy until that sale of shares.

Liddell said that a return to profitability will be the key to the timing of GM offering shares to the public. Boudreau estimated GM will probably need at least two or three profitable quarters in a row before its IPO.

"They have a shot at at doing it by the end of the year," he said.

Most of the losses continued to be concentrated in GM’s home North American market, where it rang up $3.4 billion of losses, while GM Europe lost $814 million in the period. But European losses were largely offset by a $738 million profit from GM International, which represents its operations outside of North America and Europe. That led to a wordwide total loss of about $3.4 billion.

Driven by strong sales gains in China, GM International sold almost as many cars as GM North America and Europe combined during the quarter. 

Source