All Articles Tagged "corporate regulation"
Fighting Big Oil in a Black Neighborhood's Backyard
(Bloomberg) — When Hilton Kelley takes me to see the Port Arthur, Texas, housing project where he was born, it isn’t to complain about the usual eyesores. There’s no graffiti, no broken windows, no trash on the ground. “People care about the neighborhood,” Kelley says. The problem is next-door. Adjacent to the property are oil and gas refineries, petrochemical plants and toxic-waste incinerators. Companies such as Chevron Phillips Chemical Co., Shell Oil Co. and Valero Energy Corp. (VLO) have been part of the Port Arthur skyline for decades. “Almost every day we’re getting some weird odor oozing through the community,” he says. Bad as it is, though, it would be a lot worse if Kelley hadn’t come back after years away from his hometown and decided to fight the filth. His efforts won him the Goldman Environmental Prize last month, along with its $150,000 award.
For Whistle-Blowers, Expanded Incentives
(New York Times) — When insider-trading scandals plagued the financial markets in the late 1980s, lawmakers created a bounty program for whistle-blowers, allowing regulators to reward tipsters who uncovered evidence of manipulation. The effort largely failed, in part because the issue of whether to make a reward payment was left to the discretion of regulators. In 20 years, the program paid out a total of less than $160,000 to a handful of whistle-blowers. Now, Congress and financial-market regulators are revamping a reward system for whistle-blowers, offering big payouts for tips about a host of securities and commodity law violations, to be doled out from a new $451 million fund.
Amendment Will Change Non-Compete Deals
(AJC) — Georgia voters this week made a major change in how non-compete agreements can be enforced. More than 1.6 million Georgians approved Amendment 1. It adds exceptions to language in the Georgia Constitution that bars legislation “from defeating or lessening competition.” This would allow courts to modify agreements between firms and their workers instead of accepting or rejecting them outright. Supporters argue that 68 percent of voters agreed because the change will help draw and keep business in Georgia.
