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Home Insights IRS Releases Proposed Regulations on Additional Federal Income Tax Requirements for Charitable Hospitals
IRS Releases Proposed Regulations on Additional Federal Income Tax Requirements for Charitable Hospitals
22 August 2012 Publication
Authors: Michael G. Bailey Mark T. Schieble
Legal News Alert: Health Care
On June 26, 2012, the IRS published proposed regulations that provide guidance on additional requirements for charitable hospital organizations for financial assistance and emergency medical care policies, charges for certain care provided to individuals eligible for financial assistance, and billing and collections.
Highlights of the Proposed Regulations
Not yet effective, but still important. The proposed regulations are not currently effective, are not currently binding on charitable organizations, and are proposed to apply only to taxable years beginning after the date final regulations are published by the IRS. Nonetheless, the proposed regulations provide insight into how the IRS is likely to interpret the additional requirements that currently apply to charitable hospital organizations under the Internal Revenue Code (Code), and merit careful consideration by hospital organizations when developing and revising their policies and procedures. Taxpayers may rely on the proposed regulations until final or temporary regulations are published.
Detailed requirements would necessitate changes to the policies and practices of many hospitals. The proposed regulations would impose very detailed and specific requirements for content and implementation of financial assistance policies. It is notable that most of these rules are not framed as safe harbors, but as minimum requirements. The highly detailed nature of many of the proposed new rules would require many hospital organizations to significantly revise their financial assistance policies and practices.
Specific methods required for determining "amounts generally billed" (AGB) are new. The Code limits certain charges to AGB. The proposed regulations would require AGB to be determined by using one of two specified methods, 1) a "Look-Back Method" that is permitted to take into account claims paid in full for Medicare-fee-for-service and all private health insurers, and 2) a "Prospective Medicare Method" that takes into account only Medicare fee-for-service charges. These required methods are a significant departure from the permitted method referenced in the legislative history.
Specific procedures and time periods required for making "reasonable efforts" relating to billing and collection. The Code requires that a hospital organization make reasonable efforts to determine eligibility for financial assistance before taking extraordinary collection actions. The proposed regulations would impose detailed notification and other procedural requirements, including a notice period of 120 days or longer and an application period of 240 days or longer.
Emergency medical care policy requirements. The proposed regulations would provide that a hospital facility's medical care policy must prohibit debt collection activities from occurring in the emergency department or in other hospital venues where such activities could interfere with the treatment of emergency medical conditions.
Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) requirement is not addressed. The proposed regulations do not provide further guidance on the requirement to conduct a CHNA. The IRS released interim guidance on those requirements in 2011 which can continue to be relied upon until the promulgation of regulations. Final regulations will likely address those requirements as well as the other requirements addressed in the proposed regulations.
Consequences for failure to comply are not addressed. The proposed regulations do not provide any guidance on the consequences of noncompliance, which will be the subject of future regulations. The need for such guidance is made greater by the very detailed nature of many of the proposed rules and the potentially harsh consequences of failure to comply with the new statutory requirements.
Public comments may be important. It is possible, but not certain, that final regulations will be more flexible in certain respects. Public comments from the nonprofit health care community will likely play an important role in the development of more workable final rules.
Summary of Key New Proposed Rules
Tables summarizing the new proposed rules are available here.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), enacted in March 2010 established new requirements for section 501(c)(3) hospital organizations under the Code.
General Description of the Additional Requirements in the Code
The PPACA establishes additional requirements for any organization that operates at least one hospital facility to qualify as a section 501(c)(3) organization. In general, section 501(r) of the Code imposes the following new requirements.
CHNA. Each hospital facility is required to conduct a CHNA at least every three taxable years and adopt an implementation strategy to meet the community needs identified. A CHNA must take into account input from persons who represent the broad interests of the community served by the hospital facility, including those with special knowledge of or expertise in public health, and be made widely available to the public.
Financial assistance policy. Each hospital facility is required to adopt, implement, and widely publicize a written financial assistance policy. The financial assistance policy must indicate the eligibility criteria for financial assistance and whether such assistance includes free or discounted care, the basis for calculating amounts charged to patients, the method of applying for financial assistance, and, in the case of an organization that does not have a separate billing and collections policy, the actions that the organization may take in the event of non-payment, including collections action and reporting to credit agencies. Each hospital facility also is required to adopt a written policy requiring the organization to provide, without discrimination, care for emergency medical conditions to individuals regardless of their ability to pay.
Limitation on charges. Each hospital facility is permitted to bill for emergency or other medically necessary care provided to individuals who qualify for financial assistance under the facility's financial assistance policy in amounts that do not exceed what is "generally billed to individuals who have insurance covering such care." A hospital may not use gross charges.
Collection processes. A hospital facility (or its affiliates) may not undertake extraordinary collection actions (even if otherwise permitted by law) against an individual without first making reasonable efforts to determine whether the individual is eligible for assistance under the hospital's financial assistance policy.
The additional requirements addressed by the proposed regulations (that is, other than the CHNA requirement) are generally effective for taxable years beginning after March 23, 2010.
Failure to complete a CHNA in any applicable three-year period can result in a penalty on the organization of up to $50,000, in addition to possible revocation of status as a section 501(c)(3) organization.
Additional disclosure requirements. The PPACA also imposes new reporting and disclosure requirements on hospital organizations. Each organization must include in its Form 990 information return a description of how the organization is addressing the needs identified in each CHNA and a description of any such needs that are not being addressed, together with the reasons why such needs are not being addressed.
Continuing review by IRS and Treasury. The IRS is required to review information about a hospital's community benefit activities at least once every three years. The PPACA requires the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), to submit annually a report to Congress with information regarding the levels of charity care, bad debt expenses, unreimbursed costs of government programs, as well as costs incurred by tax-exempt hospitals for community benefit activities. The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of HHS, must conduct a study of the trends in these amounts, and submit a report on such study to Congress not later than March 2015.
The additional requirements are more modest than some legislative proposals. The additional requirements are more modest additions to the eligibility requirements than certain proposals that have been made in the legislative process. Perhaps most importantly, section 501(r) of the Code does not subject tax-exempt hospital organizations to a minimum charity care requirement. A minimum charity care requirement was included in a U.S. Senate Finance Committee paper outlining options for financing health care, but was not enacted.
Prior Guidance on CHNA
The IRS published certain guidance on the CHNA requirements of section 501(r) of the Code in Notice 2011-52. The proposed regulations do not address the additional CHNA requirements. The IRS can be expected to published final regulations, however, that address both the CHNA requirements and the additional requirements addressed by the proposed regulations. The proposed regulations respond in part to public comments received by the IRS pursuant to a request for comments in Notice 2010-39.
Description of the Proposed Regulations
I. Definition of "Hospital Facility" Focuses on State Law Licensing
The requirements of section 501(r) of the Code apply to each hospital facility operated by a 501(c)(3) organization. The proposed regulations would clarify that a hospital facility means a facility required by a state to be licensed, registered, or similarly recognized as a hospital. An organization may treat multiple buildings operating under a single state license as a hospital facility.
The proposed regulations would except governmental hospital organizations that are 501(c)(3) organizations, but indicate that the IRS is receptive to receiving public comments regarding whether governmental hospital organizations merit special treatment.
II. Definition of "Hospital Organization" Includes Organizations Participating in Joint Ventures
The proposed regulations also would provide that a hospital organization subject to the additional requirements includes a 501(c)(3) organization that operates a hospital facility through a disregarded entity, joint venture, limited liability company, or other entity treated as a partnership for federal tax purposes. The proposed regulations indicate that the IRS is receptive to considering comments about whether certain exceptions to this treatment should apply.
III. Emergency Medical Care Policy Requirements
The proposed regulations would provide significant interpretation of the requirement of section 501(r)(4)(B) of the Code that a hospital facility must have a written policy to provide, without discrimination, care for emergency medical conditions regardless of their eligibility under the financial policy.
Notably, the proposed regulations specifically require that a hospital facility's emergency medical care policy must prohibit the hospital facility from engaging in actions that discourage individuals from seeking emergency medical care, such as by demanding that emergency department patients pay before receiving treatment for emergency medical conditions or by permitting debt collection activities in the emergency department or in other areas of the hospital facility, where such activities could interfere with the provision, without discrimination, of emergency medical care. The proposed regulations also provide that an emergency medical care policy will generally meet the requirement of the Code if it requires the hospital facility to provide the care for any emergency medical condition that the hospital facility is required to provide under the federal regulations under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.
IV. Financial Assistance Policy (FAP) Requirements
The proposed regulations set forth in detail the requirements for a written FAP. As is required by section 501(r)(4) of the Code, a FAP must apply to emergency and medically necessary care provided by the hospital facility and include:
Eligibility criteria for financial assistance and whether such assistance includes free or discounted care
The basis for calculating amounts charged to patients
The method for applying for financial assistance
In the case of a separate hospital facility that does not have a separate collections policy, the actions that may be taken in the event of nonpayment
Measures to widely publicize the FAP within the community served by the hospital facility
The proposed regulations would set forth detailed procedures required to meet each of these requirements.
Eligibility criteria and basis for calculating amounts charged to patients. The proposed regulations would require a FAP to:
Specify all financial assistance available under the FAP, including all discounts and free care and, if applicable, the amounts (e.g., gross charges) to which any discount percentages may be applied
Specify all of the eligibility criteria that an individual must satisfy to receive each such discount
State that, following a determination of FAP-eligibility, a FAP-eligible individual will not be charged more for emergency or other medically necessary care than the AGB to individuals who have insurance covering such care
Describe the method used to determine the AGB standard
If the hospital facility uses the Look-Back Method, either state the AGB percentages and how they were determined, or explain where this information can be obtained
Method for applying for assistance. The proposed regulations would require a FAP to describe how an individual applies for financial assistance and either the FAP or the FAP application form must specifically describe the information and documentation that an individual is required to submit. The proposed regulations would provide that a hospital facility may not deny financial assistance under the FAP based on an applicant's failure to provide information or documentation that the application form does not require.
Actions that may be taken in the event of nonpayment. The proposed regulations would provide that either the FAP or a separate written billings and collections policy of the hospital facility must describe:
Any actions that the hospital facility (or other authorized party) may take relating to obtaining payment of a bill for medical care, including, but not limited to, any Extraordinary Collection Actions (ECA)
The process and specific time frames the hospital facility (or other authorized party) uses in taking actions to obtain payments, including, but not limited to, the reasonable efforts that it will take to determine whether an individual is FAP-eligible
The office, department, committee, or other body with the final authority or responsibility for determining that the hospital facility has made reasonable efforts to determine whether an individual is FAP-eligible
Widely publicizing the FAP. The proposed regulations would require detailed procedures to widely publicize a FAP, which include Web site posting, making available paper copies, and physical postings. The proposed regulations would require the hospital organization to, at no cost to the public:
Make the FAP, FAP application form, and plain language summary widely available on the organization's Web site
Make paper copies of the FAP, FAP application form, and plain language summary of the FAP available upon request and without charge, both in public locations in the hospital and by mail
Inform and notify visitors to the hospital facility through conspicuous public displays or other measures reasonably calculated to attract visitor's attention
Inform and notify residents of the community served by the hospital facility about the FAP in a manner reasonably calculated to reach those members of the community who are most likely to require financial assistance
Notably, the proposed regulations would require the materials covered (including the FAP, application form, and plain language summary) to be in English and the primary language of any populations with limited proficiency in English that constitute more than 10 percent of the residents of the community served by the hospital community.
The proposed regulations also would set forth detailed requirements for how materials are posted on the organization's Web site, which requirements are generally focused on providing assurances that the postings are conspicuous and readily available.
V. Limitations on Charges
The proposed regulations would provide a detailed interpretation of the requirement in section 501(r)(5) of the Code that generally requires a hospital facility to limit the amount charged for care it provides to any individual who is eligible for assistance under its FAP to (i) in the case of emergency or other medically necessary care, not more than the AGB to individuals who have insurance covering such care and (ii) in the case of all other medical care, less than gross charges for such care.
The proposed regulations would require a hospital facility to use one of two permitted methods to determine AGB: (i) a Look-Back Method and (ii) a Prospective Medicare Method. The regulations provide that a hospital may use either method but, once a choice is made, continue to use that particular method. Notably, the proposed regulations would not adopt the method for determining AGB indicated by the legislative history, which contemplated AGB may be based on either the best, or an average of the three best, negotiated commercial rates, or Medicare rates.
The Look-Back Method is based on the actual past claims paid to the hospital facility by either Medicare fee-for-service only or Medicare fee-for-service together with all private health insurers paying claims to the hospital facility (including, in each case, associated portions of these claims paid by Medicare beneficiaries or insured individuals). This method avoids the need to determine which private health insurers have the lowest rates, but also requires the hospital facility to take into account the rates paid by Medicare.
Under the Look-Back Method, a hospital facility would be required to calculate its AGB no less frequently than annually by dividing the sum of certain claims paid to the hospital facility by the sum of the associated gross charges for those claims. More specifically, the AGB percentages must be based on all claims that have been paid in full to the hospital facility for emergency and other medically necessary care by either Medicare fee-for-service alone or by medical fee-for-service and all private health insurers together as the primary payors of these claims during the prior 12-month period. A hospital facility must begin applying its AGB percentages by the 45th day after the end of the 12-month period the hospital facility used in calculating the AGB percentages.
The IRS specifically asks for public comments on whether the Look-Back Method can be based on a sampling of claims, whether the 45-day period is too short, and whether hospital facilities might significantly increase gross charges after calculating AGB.
The second permitted method to determine AGB is the Prospective Medicare Method. Under this method, a hospital facility may determine AGB for any emergency and medically necessary care by using the same billing and coding process that the hospital facility would use if the individual were a Medicare fee-for-service beneficiary.
The proposed regulations would define "gross charges" as the hospital's full, established rate for medical care that the hospital facility consistently and uniformly charges all patients before applying any contractual allowances, discounts, or deductions. The proposed regulations would provide that the prohibition on gross charges applies to any medical care, not just emergency and medically necessary care, that is provided to a FAP-eligible individual. The proposed regulations would permit gross charges to be stated on hospital bills as a starting point.
VI. Billing and Collection Actions
The proposed regulations would provide detailed interpretation of the requirement in section 501(r)(6) of the Code that a hospital facility must not engage in ECAs against an individual before the hospital facility has made reasonable efforts to determine whether the individual is eligible for assistance under its FAP.
The proposed regulations provide that a hospital facility will have made reasonable efforts to determine whether an individual is FAP-eligible only if the hospital follows certain specified procedures for notification and processing FAP applications. The proposed regulations set forth separate requirements for individuals who submit incomplete applications and individuals who submit complete applications.
General notification requirement. The proposed regulations would require the following detailed notification process. The proposed regulations set forth a required notification period that generally begins on the first date care is provided to the individual and ends on the 120th day after the hospital facility provides the individual with the first billing statement for care. Under this process, the hospital facility must:
Distribute a plain language summary of the FAP and offer a FAP application form to the individual before discharge
Include a plain language summary with all (and at least three) billing statements for the care and all other written communications regarding the bill provided during the notification period
Inform the individual about the FAP in all oral communications with the individual regarding the amount due for the care that occur during the notification period
Provide the individual with at least one written notice that (i) informs the individual about the ECAs the hospital facility or other authorized party may take if the individual does not submit the application or pay the amount due by a deadline specified in the notice that is no earlier than the last day of the notification period; and (ii) is provided to the individual at least 30 days before the deadline specified in the written notice
If an individual submits a FAP application (whether complete or incomplete) during the application period, the hospital facility will be treated as having meet the notification requirement as of the day the application is submitted.
Reasonable efforts to review FAP applications to determine eligibility. The proposed regulations would establish specific procedures and timeframes to establish that a hospital organization has made reasonable efforts to determine whether an individual is FAP eligible. In general, a hospital facility must determine whether an individual is FAP eligible or provide required notices within a notification period ending 120 days after the first billing statement. Although a hospital facility may undertake extraordinary collection actions after this 120-day notification period, a hospital facility that has not determined whether an individual is FAP-eligible must still accept and process FAP applications for an additional 120 days. Accordingly, the hospital must accept and process applications for 240 days or longer after the first billing statement. If a hospital facility receives applications during the application period, it must suspend any extraordinary collection actions until it has processed the application and, if it determines the individual is FAP-eligible, must seek to reverse the extraordinary collection actions, and promptly refund any overpaid amounts.
If a hospital facility refers or sells an individual's debt to another party during the application period, the hospital facility would be required to obtain (and, to the extent legally applicable, enforce) a written agreement from that party that it will meet the general requirements relating to reasonable efforts that apply to the hospital facility.
Definition of ECA not limited to actions requiring legal or judicial process. The proposed regulations would generally provide that ECAs include any actions taken by a hospital facility against an individual related to obtaining payment of a bill for care covered under the hospital facility's FAP that require a legal or judicial process, but also include certain actions that do not require legal or judicial process. The proposed regulations would provide that ECAs include, but are not limited to, actions to:
Place a lien on an individual's property
Foreclose on an individual's property
Commence a civil action against an individual
Cause an individual's arrest
Cause an individual to be subject to a writ or body of attachment
Garnish an individual's wages
Selling an individual's debt to another party
Reporting adverse information about the individual to consumer credit reporting agencies or credit bureaus
It is notable that the proposed regulations indicate that other actions requiring legal or judicial action could also be treated as ECAs.
VII. Little Guidance on the Standard for Compliance or the Consequences of Noncompliance
The proposed regulations provide that, for purposes of the requirement that a hospital organization has established a financial assistance policy, a billings and collections policy, or an emergency care policy, the organization must adopt and implement the policy. A hospital facility will be treated as having implemented a policy only if it has "consistently carried out the policy." Accordingly, the proposed regulations appear to indicate that compliance based only on good-faith efforts to comply will not be sufficient. The proposed requirement that a policy be "consistently carried out" possibly could be read to imply that some level of inadvertent or other minor noncompliance is permitted, although that is not clear. The high level of detail of the requirements set forth in the proposed regulations increases the need for guidance relating to the consequences of noncompliance.
The preamble to the proposed regulations indicates that the IRS will address the consequences of failing to meet the requirements of section 501(r) of the Code in separate guidance.
By comparison, the IRS published final regulations in 2008 that provided general guidance on when an excess benefit transaction with a "disqualified person" will result in revocation of tax-exempt status in addition to imposition of excess benefit transaction excise taxes under section 4958 of the Code, Section 1.501(c)(3)-1(f) of the Income Tax Regulations. These final regulations indicate that the relevant facts and circumstances include, but are not limited to (1) the size and scope of the organizations regular and ongoing exempt purpose activities; (2) whether the organization has been involved in multiple excess benefit transactions; (3) whether the organization has implemented safeguards that are reasonably related to prevent excess benefit transactions; (4) whether the organization has implemented safeguards reasonably calculated to prevent excess benefit transactions; and (5) whether the excess benefit transaction has been corrected. These final regulations are one possible model that the IRS could consider, at least as a starting point, in developing guidance on the consequences of failure to comply with the requirements of section 501(r) of the Code.
What's at Stake: Tax-Exempt Status for Both a Hospital Organization and Its Tax-Exempt Bonds
It merits particular emphasis that the new provisions for section 501(c)(3) hospital organizations that are set forth in 501(r) of the Code, like other section 501(c)(3) requirements, generally are all-or-nothing requirements. That is, if an organization fails to meet all of the requirements, even to a small degree, the Code technically states that an organization forfeits all of the federal tax benefits from its tax-exempt status, at least with respect to the hospital facility. The legislation provides that, if an organization fails to meet the requirements for a facility, it will not be treated as a section 501(c)(3) organization "with respect to any such facility." Thus, it is possible that in some cases, certain of the adverse tax effects resulting from failure to comply could be limited to a hospital facility owned by an organization, rather than the entire organization, depending upon the facts and circumstances and how the IRS interprets this provision.
The Code does provide that failure to complete a CHNA in any applicable three-year period results in a penalty on the organization of up to $50,000. Although it is possible that the IRS could choose to impose this penalty on a noncompliant organization rather than revoke the tax-exempt status of the organization, the penalty is literally framed as a penalty in addition to loss of tax-exempt status. In addition, an organization failing to meet the new disclosure requirements could be subject to existing incomplete return penalties.
As is set forth above, the proposed regulations do not provide any guidance on the important question of the consequences of noncompliance. The Code provides that an organization must establish a FAP, but does not specifically detail the consequence if the policy is not actually followed to some degree. The legislative history states that the requirement is that an organization must adopt, implement, and widely publicize such a policy.
Change of Law Risk
One of the most important lessons to be taken from the additional requirements for charitable hospitals is that hospital organizations now appear to be subjected to heightened change of law risk in the future. By enacting the specific additional statutory requirements, Congress has plainly indicated a willingness to consider special statutory requirements for tax-exempt hospital organizations. In addition, the statutorily mandated periodic review and submission of reports relating to community benefit provided by section 501(c)(3) hospital organizations may increase the likelihood that Congress will consider additional requirements for section 501(c)(3) hospital organizations in the future and may increase IRS scrutiny of particular 501(c)(3) hospital organizations with the applicable requirements. Change of law risk may be particularly heightened in 2015, when the Treasury Department and HHS are required to submit a report on community benefit to Congress.
How the Additional Requirements Apply in the Framework of the Tax-Exempt Bond Requirements
In the case of any bond issue that is subject to the requirements of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, all of the bond-financed property must be owned by a section 501(c)(3) organization or a governmental unit. Accordingly, the failure of an organization benefiting from tax-exempt bond financing to continue to qualify as a 501(c)(3) organization ordinarily results in loss of the tax-exempt status of the bonds, possibly from the date of issuance of the bonds. In general, the requirements for tax-exempt bonds are subject to the same type of all-or-nothing rule as the requirements for tax-exempt hospital organizations — failure to comply with the requirements applicable to a bond issue, even to a small degree, results in the entire bond issue failing to comply.
The very detailed and specific manner in which the additional requirements are framed in the proposed regulations raises particular questions in this context.
The applicable federal income tax regulations provide a framework for how the tax-exempt bond use-of-proceeds rules apply to this type of bond issue. In general, a borrower must both (1) reasonably expect on the date of issuance that the bond issue will meet the use-of-proceeds requirements throughout the term of the bond issue and (2) not take any deliberate action during the term of the bond issue that results in noncompliant use.
If a borrower does take a deliberate action that results in noncompliant use during the term of the bond issue, the borrower is generally permitted to take certain remedial actions to preserve the tax-exempt status of the bond issue, provided those actions are taken promptly after the deliberate action. The permitted remedial actions include early redemption or defeasance of the portion of the bond issue that fails to comply (the nonqualified bonds) and, in some cases, use of the proceeds received from a cash sale or other disposition for other qualifying purposes.
The exact application of this framework to the new requirements of section 501(r) is not entirely clear, but we believe the a probable analysis of the IRS is as follows:
First, on the date of issuance of any new tax-exempt bonds, the borrower must reasonably expect to meet all of the eligibility requirements for a section 501(c)(3) organization, including the new requirements of section 501(r) of the Code, throughout the term of the bond issue. That means that, on the date of each new bond issue, the borrower must now have a high degree of confidence that it will meet the new requirements for long periods of time. As a general matter, it would be appropriate for a borrower to specifically represent in bond documents that it intends to meet the requirements of section 501(r) for the entire term of the bond issue.
Second, any failure of a benefited organization to meet the new requirements will likely be treated as a deliberate action resulting in loss of tax-exempt status on the bonds, unless an appropriate remedial action is promptly taken. In most cases, the permitted remedial action would likely be only early redemption or defeasance of the nonqualified bonds.
Particular Challenges Posed by the Tax-Exempt Bond Requirements
The interplay between the new requirements of section 501(r) of the Code and the existing tax-exempt bond requirements may raise challenges for hospital organizations that are not immediately evident.
The long-time horizon for tax-exempt bond compliance. The tax-exempt bond use-of-proceeds requirements in general apply continuously through the entire term of a bond issue. Because tax-exempt bond issues commonly have maturities of 30 years or longer, the period of required compliance is typically very long. Largely for that reason, almost all tax-exempt bond issues are subject to express bond document covenants that require the benefited organizations to maintain its status as section 501(c)(3) organizations during the period bonds are outstanding. Failure to maintain section 501(c)(3) status typically would result in a bond document default. In most cases, a borrower of tax-exempt bonds could not choose to fail to meet the new requirements for section 501(c)(3) organizations unless it promptly took the remedial action of redeeming or defeasing tax-exempt bonds, which could be quite costly. This means that, in many cases, failing to meet the new requirements will not be a practicable option.
By contrast, a hospital organization that is not a user of tax-exempt bond proceeds often could choose to forfeit its corporate income tax exemption and ability to qualify as a recipient of deductible charitable donations without the same type of long-term contractual constraints.
Compliance "foot faults" may foreclose or significantly delay tax-exempt financing. The marketing of tax-exempt bonds typically requires an "unqualified" opinion of bond counsel to the effect that interest on the bonds is tax-exempt for federal income tax purposes. In the case of tax-exempt hospital bonds, the bond counsel almost always requires an unqualified opinion from the borrower's counsel to the effect that each organization benefiting from the financing qualifies as a section 501(c)(3) organization. In addition, in the case of refunding bonds, bond counsel typically requires express representations or an opinion to the effect that each organization benefiting from the refinancing has qualified as a section 501(c)(3) organization for the period of time the prior bonds were outstanding.
The requirements in section 501(r) of the Code are in general much more specific and detailed than the more qualitative requirements set forth under the community benefit standard, and the proposed regulations would make these new requirements even more detailed and specific. Neither the Code nor the proposed regulations contains any provision to the effect that substantial compliance with the new requirements is sufficient. A failure to meet any of the new specific "bright line" requirements, even if more technical than substantive, could have the result of foreclosing or delaying a tax-exempt financing. In addition, a failure to meet any of these new specific requirements could result in a technical default under bond documents for outstanding bonds, with potentially costly and complicated consequence.
In such situations, it is possible that the IRS would entertain requests for voluntary closing agreements to conclusively protect the tax-exempt status of a hospital organization, in the same manner that the IRS currently entertains voluntary closing agreement requests for violations of the tax-exempt bond requirements. Obtaining such a voluntary closing agreement, however, could lead to significant delays.
Accordingly, the interplay between the additional requirements of section 501(r) of the Code and existing tax-exempt bond requirements as a practical matter greatly increases the need to rigorously comply with the additional requirements.
This topic will be discussed in our upcoming Web conference on Tuesday, August 28, 2012. Conference and registration information is available here.
Legal News Alert is part of our ongoing commitment to providing up-to-the-minute information about pressing concerns or industry issues affecting our health care clients and colleagues. If you have any questions about this Alert or would like to discuss this topic further, please contact your Foley attorney or any of the following:
Michael G. Bailey
mbailey@foley.com
Kenneth R. Appleby
kappleby@foley.com
Mark T. Schieble
mschieble@foley.com
Meredith A. Brooks
mbrooks@foley.com


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


So you've watched the The Social Network and are convinced that Mark Zuckerberg is a real jerk. You may soon be thinking the same thing about Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, only this time, it's not just a movie.
The official version of Twitter's conception begins in Williams' apartment. Williams, along with former Google employee Biz Stone and investor Jack Dorsey set out to build a podcasting platform called Odeo, but after Apple launched iTunes, the company quickly became obsolete. Instead, Williams bought out Odeo's investors and shifted the focus toward a little idea about 140 character status updates.
However, Business Insider reports that the real story is not that simple, or innocent. Notably, it leaves out one of the social media giant's co-founders, Noah Glass.
Nicholas Carlson reports, "According to interviews with about a dozen early investors and employees, the story of how Twitter was actually founded begins with an entrepreneur named Noah Glass, who started Odeo in his apartment."
The longer, "real" version goes like this.
Odeo began in Glass' apartment, it later moved into Williams'. Eventually, it expanded to an office building and 14 employees.
In 2005, Odeo's expansion was halted when Apple announced iTunes. Williams, who by now was Odeo's CEO, asked his employees for a new direction to salvage the company. That's when Jack Dorsey's light bulb went one and he came up with the a social networking site based on a person's "status." Noah Glass developed the concept with Dorsey and presented the idea to the company.
"After that February presentation to the company, Evan Williams was skeptical of Twitter's potential, but he put Glass in charge of the project," Business Insider reporter. "From time to time, Biz Stone helped out Glass's Twitter team."
Odeo investor George Zachary told Business Insider "there were two people who were really excited [about Twitter], Jack and Noah Glass. Noah was fanatically excited about Twitter. Fanatically! Evan and Biz weren't at that level. Not remotely."
Almost a year after Williams asked his employees for ideas, he told investors about Odeo's Twitter project. In those early days, nobody knew that the company would one day be worth over $5 billion, and Williams, hoping to save investors a loss, offered to buy back Odeo's stock. Odeo's investors accepted the deal, though some believe they got conned, believing Williams knew more about Twitter's potential than he let on.
After taking ownership, Williams first order of business was to change the name to Obvious Corp, his second was to fire Noah Glass.
The most common explanation among the company's early employees was that Glass' boisterous personality clashed with the quiet and contemplative Williams. Other suggest Glass' push to run Twitter himself didn't sit well with the chief executive.
In any case, Williams remained at the helm of one the of the most successful social media companies, and Glass' name was largely erased from the history books.
Glass, whose Twitter page says "I started this," admits he didn't do it alone. He credits Dorsey and others, saying the site's genesis happened through "conversations." Though Twitter's biggest advocate, who gave the site its name, insists that the story given by Evan Williams and Biz Stones does not acknowledge the contributions he made. He said, "I do know that without me, Twitter wouldn't exist. In a huge way."
In a small recognition of that fact, after Business Insider published the story, Williams wrote on Twitter "It's true that @Noah never got enough credit for his early role at Twitter."
And while we're on the subject, Follow Me On Twitter.


Holly & Heather's Helpful Hint: Take a Break!
We are taking a week off to rest and recoup! Schools are closed, routines are forgotten and r & r is required! We hope your winter recess is relaxing too!
Holly & Heather's Helpful Hint: Love is Always in the Air!
February is always full of hearts and flowers for St. Valentine's day but we declare that it's all about love 365/24/7! And not just the romantic kind everyone is so focused on now but also the love for others – your family, animals, our environment, God and yourself. As you are going through your day, take time to center yourself and remember the love that you have to give. It could be big – donating your time to a charitable project, or small – a hug for your loved one, but the love is always there. And it's important to remember that you love and are loved.
We've blogged in the past about hygge, the Danish word for a cozy and content lifestyle and now we're hearing about lagom, a Swedish term for "just the right amount" or "not too little, not too much". We would like to combine this idea with what we love about hygge; it feels like they go perfectly together.
We all need balance in life; if you spend too much time talking in work all day, you crave quiet when you get home. We used to tell our kids when they were little that you can't eat cake and ice cream for every meal, have a little, but also have your meat and veggies. You can apply the concept of balance to anything in your life and when you combine it with hygge, the happiness quotient is multiplied!
We might feel unproductive if we lay around in our jammies all day (certainly hygge if it's raining out and you're drinking hot chocolate with a loved one!) but if you balance that with doing chores and cooking a healthy meal or donating your time to a good cause you're finding balance.
Whatever you may feel you're doing too much of, try balancing that out with something else. Bonus for keeping simple pleasures in life a priority for you and your loved ones!


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Tag Archives: Biofuels
Alternative Energy Fetishes and Temples to Technology
Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Empire, Environmental Degradation, Military Industrial Complex, Peak Oil
"Renewable" Energies, '1 C Max', Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Alternative Energy Fetishes, Biofuels, Fossil Fuel Extenders, Green Illusions, Military Industrial Complex, Ozzie Zehner, Peak Oil, Resource Wars, Solar Energy, Techno-Fundamentalism, The Fertile Ground Institute, The Resource Curse, War for Profit, Wind Turbines
I've become rather jaded at the stream of ever-worsening environmental reports these days. Surely if we had some sort of techno-fix to halt the cascade of biospheric tipping points we have breached, we would have deployed them by now. Nevertheless, the carrot of a civilization-saving technological breakthrough is forever dangled before our eyes. By all accounts, we appear hellbent on doing everything humanly possible to maintain and perpetuate industrial civilization by deploying "earth-friendly" renewable energy technologies which, in the end, turn out to be nothing more than "reconstituted fossil fuels".
The role that fossil fuels play in the creation, maintenance and support of alternative energy technologies is not discussed or analyzed at all by those peddling it to the masses who live with the hope of a "green" economy and carbon-neutral civilization. From the massive mining operations and manufacturing processes necessary to extract the rare earth metals essential in constructing wind turbines, solar panels, and electric car batteries to their daily maintenance, de-activation, and final discardment, the amount of fossil fuel energy embedded in the entire life cycle of such alternative energy technologies renders moot their benefits when compared to what is actually more effective in solving our energy and climate conundrum —reducing our consumption through energy efficiency improvements and waste reduction programs. Alternative energy technologies cannot replace our dependence on fossil fuels and are, in the final analysis, diverting us from coming to grips with a way-of-life that cannot go on for much longer. We have a consumption crisis.
Here is an excerpt from a must-see talk by engineer and energy analyst Ozzie Zehner, author of Green Illusions:
"Common knowledge presumes that we have a choice between fossil fuels and green energy, but alternative energy technologies rely on fossil fuels through every stage of their life cycle. Most importantly, alternative energy financing relies ultimately on the kind of economic growth that fossil fuels provide. Alternative energy technologies rely on fossil fuels for raw material extraction, for fabrication, for installation and maintenance, for back-up, as well as decommissioning and disposal. And at this point, there's even a larger question: where will we get the energy to build the next generation of wind power and solar cells? Wind is renewable, but turbines are not. Alternative energy technologies rely on fossil fuels and are, in essence, a product of fossil fuels. They thrive within economic systems that are themselves reliant on fossil fuels.
Now, I'm no fan of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are finite and dirty, but we use them for five principal reasons. Fossil fuels are dense. Their energy is storable, portable, fungible (which means they can be easily traded), and they are transformable into other products like pesticides, fertilizers, and plastics.
Now, these qualities cannot be measured in kilowatts, so what happens when we spend our precious fossil fuels on building alternative energy. Well then we get energy that is not dense, but diffuse. It's not easily storable. It's not portable. It's not fungible. And it is non-tranformable.
Now to increase the quality of the energy, we then have to spend more fossil fuels to build batteries, to build back-up power plants, and other infrastructure. And of course this is incredibly expensive. Ultimately that expense represents the hidden fossil fuels behind the scene.
There's an impression that clean energy can supply a growing population of high consumers. There's an impression that alternative energy can displace fossil fuel use, but the evidence doesn't show that.
As Ozzie Zehner states, fossil fuels are finite and dirty. If you look at the headlines, the geopolitical wrangling and wars that takes place over the extraction of fossil fuels are another nasty and destabilizing side-effect of our dependency on fossil fuels. America's global network of bases and its military industrial complex are yet another hidden cost of our fossil fuel addiction. Does President Obama tell the people of America the real underlying reason for why we are again bombing Iraq?
The US military intervention, despite its "humanitarian" propaganda, is nevertheless part of clear political objectives that are to protect American diplomatic personnel stationed in Erbil (which is also home to a CIA base) and large multinational companies in the hydrocarbon/oil sector such as Mobil, Chevron, Exxon and Total exploiting the oil production in the region and having already invested more than $10 billion there, but the primary purpose above all is to keep the Iraqi regime ally, inherited from the American invasion. The United States did not intervene when Mosul fell and other regions and more than 200 000 refugees were on the road in the direction of Iraqi Kurdistan, but only when IS was threatening to conquer the Kurdish areas of the North and the capital Baghdad in the South. – link
Here we are once again back at war because we need that black goo lying beneath the ground that those lunatic terrorists are running around on. And it also doesn't help that America has become a warfare state with the corporations and the über rich benefitting every time we crank up our war machine.
Among many others who have written about this subject, here are two people from The Fertile Ground Institute who have also looked into alternative energy technologies and come away with the same conclusion as Ozzie Zehner:
I agree with commenter 'C 1 Max' whose many thoughtful comments at Robert Scribbler's site were summarily deleted.
As long as we ignore the limitations of technology and the unsustainable nature of our economic system, the battle is lost for mankind. The grave we are digging for ourselves will only get deeper and deeper, spurred on by our alternative energy fetishes and temples to technology.
Update on the Embattled Water-Energy-Food Nexus
Posted by xraymike79 in Climate Change, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Peak Oil, Pollution
American Livestock Industry, Biofuels, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Drought in America's Bread basket, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Collapse, Global Warming, Peak Oil, U.S. Department of Agriculture, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Water-Energy-Food Nexus
I'm working on adding graphics and trimming down a couple videos made from an extraenvironmentalist podcast of interviews with energy specialists Chris Nelder and Gregor Macdonald; but in the meantime, here is an update on the water-energy-food nexus exacerbated by climate change which I blogged about here. The social consequences are spelled out:
…US farms are already crippled: the Department of Agriculture says the corn (maize) crop is likely to be the worst since 1995. As a result, the Food Price Index (FPI) of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization rose 6 per cent in July, to 213.
That is dangerously high, says Yaneer Bar-Yam of the New England Complex Systems Institute in Massachusetts. He has found that if the FPI goes above 210, riots and unrest become more likely around the world. Both the 2011 Arab Spring and the 2008 riots in places such as Mexico, India, Russia and Belgium may have been partly triggered by high food prices.
More unrest is likely in the next year, although we cannot predict where, says Bar-Yam. That depends on how governments respond… – source
…and on the energy and water front:
…Power plants are a hidden casualty of droughts, says Barbara Carney of the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Morgantown, West Virginia, because they are completely dependent on water for cooling and make up about half the water usage in the US. That makes them vulnerable in a heat wave. If water levels in the rivers that cool them drop too low, the power plant – already overworked from the heat – won't be able to draw in enough water. In addition, if the cooling water discharged from a plant raises already-hot river temperatures above certain thresholds, environmental regulations require the plant to shut down.
One nuclear plant in Connecticut recently had to shut down because the sea water used for cooling was too warm. Nationwide, nuclear generation is at its lowest in a decade, with the plants operating at only 93 per cent of capacity.
Nuclear is the thirstiest power source. According to NETL, the average nuclear plant that generates 12.2 million megawatt hours of electricity requires far more water to cool its turbines than other power plants. Nuclear plants need 2725 litres of water per megawatt hour for cooling. Coal or natural gas plants need, on average, only 1890 and 719 litres respectively to produce the same amount of energy….
Bio fuel thirst
Reports of how much energy the US has generated this summer won't be released for some months, he says. The North American Energy Reliability Corporation's most recent report (PDF) calls the drought outlook "not optimistic" for energy, but says that most of the US should be able to meet its energy demands this year. The exception is Texas, where resources are expected to be tight.
Utility-scale power isn't the only energy source being hurt by the drought, however. With corn harvests expected to be as low as 75 per cent of normal yields, biofuel production is also suffering. Compared to other energy sources, biofuel production requires the most water.
…Arjen Hoekstra of the University of Twente in the Netherlands calculates the total water use of different industries – including not just cooling but every step in the supply chain as well. According to his "water footprint calculator", biofuels require orders of magnitude more water than any other energy source… – source
Some farmers profit from the energy industry's scramble for water while other farmers are fearful, holding back water for their crops…
…Select Energy sources water for oil companies in drilling hotspots across the country, and some landowners can make between $70,000 and $85,000 over the course of a year and a half by selling the water in their ponds to the company, said Mike Wilson, a regional sales manager at Select Energy.
But many landowners aren't as willing to give up their water now that supplies have become so scarce.
"Farmers are scared about the water supply, too," said Jeff Gordon, CEO of Texas Coastal Energy Co., a small oil company that began exploring in Kansas last year. "They are now saying, 'We need to save our water for our crop and our livestock.' "
Related: Farmers hit the jackpot in Kansas oil boom
With two oil wells slated to be drilled in the next month, Texas Coastal is considering drilling its own water well at a cost of between $10,000 and $25,000.
Otherwise, it would have to pay to truck water in from out of state or buy it from local farmers and ranchers. Either method could add 3% to 4% to the overall cost of drilling an oil well. Depending on the size of the well and the amount of water required, that could add up to between $20,000 and $200,000.
To the oil companies, it's worth it. With oil prices hovering around $90 a barrel and the cost to produce a barrel of oil only around $15, the profits are huge, said Gordon, whose company is still aggressively leasing mineral rights, which gives it rights to drill on certain properties.
If the drought worsens or persists for too much longer, however, it could threaten the oil boom, particularly among the smaller drilling companies that can't afford the added costs and delays, he said.
Related: Boom chasers, next stop Kansas
"That can cripple a drilling company, as lack of water can basically suspend operations," he said.
Petro River's Alba said the drought won't affect his current drilling plans, but he will carefully assess water availability before expanding into other areas of Kansas.
Scrambling to get the oil companies to stay: Mike Lanie, the economic development director in Harper County, which is at the center of the oil boom, is determined to keep oil companies from pulling out. – source
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization as well as the American livestock industry have recently urged Congress to suspend the ethanol mandate.
The financial drain on the system from the drought…
The U.S. government recently announced it would buy $170 million in various meats to help drought-stricken farmers. Other costs to the taxpayer from this epic drought include payouts from federal crop insurance programs:
Crop insurance losses: Your tax dollars on the hook
The drought of 2012 is also likely to result in record payouts from the federal crop insurance program. This taxpayer-funded program subsidizes insurance for farmers and also partially compensates private insurers, with additional emergency assistance that kicks in during extreme events like the current drought.
Last year, weather-related events led to crop insurance claims of $10.7 billion as of April 30, 2012. According to Bruce Babcock, a professor of economics at Iowa State University, this year's losses could add up to $30 to $40 billion. Gary Schnitkey, a University of Illinois extension economist, calculates that 2012 insurance payouts for Illinois corn alone could top $3.2 billion. – source
Our response to the primary underlying cause of these increasingly disastrous droughts has been to find more drought-resistant crops and livestock. I suppose this strategy will work up to a point, but it doesn't get at the root of the problem which is industrial civilization's unbreakable marriage to fossil fuels.
George Monbiot Clueless about Peak Oil
Posted by xraymike79 in Peak Oil
Biofuels, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Conventional Crude Oil, Dave Cohen, Deep-Sea Drilling, Economic Collapse, Economic Growth, EROI, George Monbiot, Liquefied Coal, Peak Oil, Shale Oil, Tar Sands, Unconventional Liquid Fuels
George Monbiot recently penned an interesting article entitled 'We were wrong on peak oil. There's enough to fry us all' which clearly shows that he is clueless about what the definition of Peak Oil is. George, you are an influential writer; so please read the following explanation when writing future articles about oil:
Peak Oil is the term used to describe the point when worldwide production of conventional crude oil peaks in volume, which is expected to result in increased oil prices due to a decline in the availability of cheap and easily accessible oil sources. The low hanging fruit, as it were, has been plucked.
In Monbiot's article, he never mentions EROI or EROEI which basically is the energy you get back after investing/expending a certain amount of energy to retrieve that barrel of oil. There are a lot of resources that explain this, but I recommend Chris Martenson's crash course, Chapter 17b, since that was the first place that taught me.
Monbiot, along with the typical business-as-usual oil analysts, misses the fact that conventional crude production has been flat since 2004 and declares that all the Peak Oil experts were wrong. He makes the mistake of lumping crude oil extraction, a conventional source, with the more generic term of 'liquid fuels' which include unconventional sources like deep-sea drilling, tar sands, shale oil, liquefied coal, and biofuels. The conventional sources of oil have higher EROI's than the harder-to-get unconventional sources. This means that as we turn more and more to the difficult-to-extract sources, we get less bang for the buck because we are spending an increasing amount of our economy's limited resources on obtaining that critical energy. Less net energy means a smaller budget for societal complexity, thus, a return to a simpler society. And the trip down the net energy ladder is an exponential, not linear, descent. Even though Monbiot completely misunderstands what Peak Oil is and that we have indeed reached it, he at least realizes what will result from our scraping of the bottom of the EROI barrel — a global ecological catastrophe. And that is something that all peak oil deniers fail to acknowledge.
Peak Oil never meant we would run out of oil; it just meant that we would get the easy stuff first and then be forced to spend ever more to get what's left. This means more oil spills, polluted groundwater, and damage to our planet than occurred when the black stuff flowed abundantly from easily accessible areas in the earth's crust.
Worldwide, the average EROI of oil is down to 20:1 from its original value of 100:1 eighty years ago. In the 1930s, it took about one barrel of energy to extract 100 barrels of energy. By 1970, with deeper wells and greater energy expenditures for pumping and processing the oil, the EROI of domestic oil had fallen to 40:1. Today U.S. oil is produced at an EROI of about 14:1. Globally, it takes the energy in one barrel of oil to extract 20 barrels of oil. This means that our oil-fuelled economy simply has less capacity to generate wealth than it did back then, because we have to increase the share of the energy that used to be dedicated to producing goods and services back into extracting more energy.
Even more troubling than oil's 20:1 global average is the figure for new oil, just 5:1. It takes a lot of energy to drill five miles under the ocean and pump crude back to a refinery, or to cook tar sands to extract a usable fuel. The energy wellspring at the heart of our economy no longer gushes a torrent of wealth; it is a smaller, much-diminished stream. – source
Fortunately, there was at least one commenter of George's article at the Guardian who understands all this:
George, peak cheap oil has come and gone. Hubbert's sphere was the low-hanging fruit. EROEI with what remains means a permanent era of high energy prices: this is, put simply, the difference between charging folk to pick-yer-own strawberries and paying workers to harvest them from treetops (health & safety precautions included).
Studying this phenomenon, in 2007-8 I predicted a downward staircase pattern whereby oil would spike repeatedly every 1-3 years; this would burst economic bubbles and create recession and demand destruction. The latter would calm the price back down and then the cycle would repeat itself. I see no reason at all to alter that forecast…
I noticed that Dave Cohen also did a Monbiot write-up explaining the naivety of George in his jumping on the bandwagon of the corporate fossil fuel PR team. Human bias runs through 99% of mankind's discourse; so the sooner you learn to question everything, the better off you will be in learning to discern the truth from self-serving ulterior motives.
Now back to my supposed sabbatical…
'Watching a snake eat its own tail': Analysis torches Comer's double standard in Trump classified docs case January 31, 2023
EU state president urges NATO to cross more 'Russian red lines' January 31, 2023
Workers used glue to fix British nuclear submarine reactor – media January 31, 2023
US targets China's Huawei with more restrictions – Reuters January 31, 2023
Recommended Websites/weblogs & Sources of Information and Analysis (update once a week--Grand Thesis is below this post.) January 6, 2023
DeSantis Gets Under Trump's Skin — And Distracts Him From the Big Lie January 31, 2023
Two Layers of Context Needed To Understand Tyre Nichols' Murder January 31, 2023
The Biggest Story You've Never Heard About Today's Federal Debt January 31, 2023
The Interminable, Withering Babble From Today's Tower of Babel January 31, 2023
American Insurrectionists in Brazil January 31, 2023
GOP Lawmaker Hands Out Grenades as "Gifts" to Colleagues in House January 30, 2023
House Republicans Are Pushing to Make the US Tax Code Further Serve the Rich January 30, 2023
Some States Eye New Protections for Election Workers Ahead of 2024 January 30, 2023
Undercurrents Alternative News
Sol Cinema gives Wales the Royal Treatment May 27, 2022
Free radical counter culture videos to good home April 6, 2022
Majority of Government press meetings are with right wingers December 30, 2021
Watch LIVE reports from COP climate talks & resistance in Glasgow November 1, 2021

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


All are welcome to join us for VBS!
Join us evenings in July and have your child learn about God and putting faith in action through superhero themed skits, activities, projects, and fun!
If you would like to help out at VBS or donate an item, please contact us! We are always in need of donations for dinner, crafts, and snacks.


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Features / Business Management
Truck drivers have rights after fleet bankruptcies
by Jim Park March 13, 2020
TORONTO, Ont. — Adam Lowry, a company driver with Celedon Canada (Hyndman) first learned about the company's pending collapse on a news website. There had been lots of chatter about the problems with the American parent company, but little was known about the status of the Canadian operation. Indianapolis-based Celadon filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy at midnight Sunday December 9. It would be several weeks before the fate of employees at Celedon Canada would be known with certainty.
"The doors were closed, nobody was answering the phone, and nobody was telling us anything," Lowry said. "Lots of rumors were circulating that the company was going to declare bankruptcy and then the sheriff would come in and lock the gates and nobody would be able to get their belongings out of the trucks. Meanwhile, the office staff were in the building emptying out their desks in case that happened, but nobody was talking to the drivers.
"Nobody from management ever said, 'OK, stay calm. This is what happens. These are your rights. You don't have to be afraid, or this is what you need to do next.' It was chaos, and with no official word from management, the driver rumor mill was spiraling out of control."
Fleet bankruptcies
That's sounds about right for such a proceeding. The initial stages of a pending bankruptcy are seldom straight forward, and there are no rules governing those first moments. The case with Hyndman was complicated by the U.S. parent company ceasing operations under U.S. law, but leaving the Canadian company in limbo. It was widely presumed, but only confirmed more than a month later, that all but a few Hyndman employees were terminated without notice on December 9, according to the affidavit of Jeff Sippel, Hyndman's former chief financial officer.
It wasn't until January 23 that a receiver was appointed to oversee the liquidation of the assets of Celadon in Canada – branded Hyndman Transport on this side of the border — and communication went out to all the drivers and other employees.
"It sounds like there was a disconnect between December and January because the Canadian drivers are drivers for the Canadian company which had not filed yet, and the U.S. folks aren't really in direct contact with the Canadian drivers, so they would not have been the ones contacting the Canadian drivers," says Rahn Dodick, a certified insolvency and restructuring practitioner and licensed insolvency trustee.
As the partner in Toronto-based Dodick Landau explains it, the process simply takes time.
Receiving the assets
"The job of the receiver is to receive the assets of the company. The assets in this case can be trucks. It could be a warehouse. It could be a bunch of things," says Dodick, who is not directly involved in the case. "The question is whether the receiver wants to continue to operate the business or not. The receiver has that option. If it does continue to operate the business, it's got to have the funding to employ the employees and the drivers and pay for insurance for the trucks, etc.
"Notice would be sent out saying there was a receivership that was started as of a certain date. It normally will give information about the assets and the liabilities of the receivership in a very summarized format. The notice has to be mailed out within 10 days from the start of the receivership," he says.
Despite the mess that was the first few weeks of this case, things will be more orderly now that the insolvency trustee is in place.
This whole process is managed under the federal Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (BIA) and there are specific steps that must be taken. Employees have specific rights. But there aren't always specific timelines for everything to happen.
A long wait for drivers
The waiting can be difficult for employees who haven't seen a paycheque since the doors closed. The receiver or insolvency trustee needs time to determine who the creditors are and what assets can be distributed among the creditors, including employees. That process can take a long time. But in Canada — under the BIA — affected employees have access to the federal Wage Earner Protection Program (WEPP).
"WEPP offers compensation to eligible employees who are owed money from an employer in bankruptcy or receivership," says Miguel Mangalindan, a senior associate lawyer at Monkhouse Law in Toronto. "Affected employees must take the notice of bankruptcy and apply for coverage under WEPP, which will cover unpaid wages, vacation, severance and termination pay, but only up to a certain amount."
Employees must submit a claim for what they're owed to the receiver. And the receiver has to review the claim and complete an online WEPP submission on behalf of the employee, where the receiver says, "Yes, there is a claim by this employee. They're owed about X dollars, and we approve it.
"The receiver has to do that before the employee can go to Service Canada and apply for the WEPP payment," says Rahn. "It still takes usually 60 to 90 days for all of that to happen. By the time the receiver gets the claims, by the time the receiver's able to review the claims, do the submission online, and then the application by the employee and the employee getting paid, it's usually, I would say, 60 to 90 days."
What WEPP covers
WEPP basically pays wages owed to the employee much faster that a regular claim might be paid. There's no bargaining, no trade-offs. In other words, less money for a faster payout. Once employees are paid, WEPP can file to get some of those funds back from the trustee as a high-priority creditor.
WEPP only funds an employee's claim for wages owed, accrued vacation pay, termination pay in lieu of notice and severance — if entitled — up to a limit prescribed by the legislation. Any excess claim over the limit that remains unfunded is still a claim in the receivership estate. But it will only be paid if there ends up being a distribution to the unsecured creditors at the conclusion of the administration. At times, the employees will be jointly represented by legal counsel who can help the employees get the best payout possible, but there are no guarantees.
"Unfortunately for owner-operators and personal business drivers [Driver Inc.], they are considered unsecured creditors, and they get thrown into the mix last in line," says Mangalindan. "Often times, they don't realize any monies from the distribution of assets after all those other debts [secured creditors] are paid first, such as mortgages, secured debts like liens and stuff, and taxes owed. After all of that is paid, unsecured creditors don't get much, if anything at all."
by Jim Park
Jim Park was a CDL driver and owner-operator from 1978 until 1998, when he began his second career as a trucking journalist. During that career transition, he hosted an overnight radio show on a Hamilton, Ontario radio station and later went on to anchor the trucking news in SiriusXM's Road Dog Trucking channel. Jim is a regular contributor to Today's Trucking and Trucknews.com, and produces Focus On and On the Spot test drive videos.
The challenge of finding and retaining employees in the trucking industry
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Sound bites of 2019


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CBS has cancelled Kevin James comedy Kevin Can Wait after two seasons. The show's series finale aired Monday, May 7th at 8:00.
Kevin Can Wait executive producer Andy Fickman has revealed that the CBS series has been cancelled after two seasons.
The news comes as a surprise given that easily syndicatable comedies that are decent performers tend to make it over the hump once they've accumulated two full seasons of episodes. Granted, stars Kevin James and Leah Remini were expensive but not enough to offset the show's back-end potential and not enough to sink an okay performer on their own. Possibly hurting the show was the fact that it was a co-production between Sony and CBS, so negotiations for another season might've taken a turn over a complicated financial arrangement.
The writing was on the wall for CBS's Monday comedies after the lot was left out of the network's mass renewal. However, Kevin Can Wait seemed like the safest bet for renewal, especially considering how the network had treated Man with a Plan up until this point and despite of the controversy the show generated in killing off female lead Erinn Hayes. In the end, though, vertical integration won out and CBS picked fully owned (and less expensive) Man with a Plan over Kevin for the final comedy slot next year.
The series finale of Kevin Can Wait aired earlier this month on CBS.


Rami Mandel, CEO of Co-Op Israel announced on Sunday that the Mister Zol chain of supermarkets would give a gift of a half kilo of hummous to anyone who casts a vote in Tuesday's Knesset elections. The gift will be distributed in some 35 stores in the chain on Tuesday without any strings attached. In other words one doesn't have to buy anything in the store in order to get the gift, one just has to vote for any party running for the Knesset. Mandel anticipates that as a result Mr. Zol will have a NIS 500,000 write-off, but said it was worth it if a half a kilo of hummous is a sufficient incentive to get people to vote.


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California All Destinations
Explore California
California Tours
All California Tours
Skiing Classes
Snowboarding Classes
Tennis Classes
Heli-Skiing
Things to do in California
Santa Monica Beach and Pier
Palm Springs Aerial Tramway
How to Get Off the Beaten Path in San Francisco
Food Lover's Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area
San Francisco Museums After Dark
Culture Lovers Guide to Los Angeles
How to Spend 3 Days in Long Beach
Top National Parks in California
Food Lover's Guide to Los Angeles
Cabrillo National Monument
Hollywood Sign
Vikingsholm Castle
TCL Chinese Theatre
From southern California's beachy San Diego and star-studded Los Angeles to history-steeped San Francisco and quieter towns in the north, the Golden State serves up an endless array of destinations and activities. Cruise out to Alcatraz, the famed former prison in the San Francisco Bay, or visit Catalina Island on a boat trip from Long Beach or Dana Point. Outdoor adventures in Yosemite National Park, skiing in Lake Tahoe, or a stroll down the Santa Monica Pier give a glimpse of the state's majestic natural features. Visit LA to stroll on the Walk of Fame, hit the theme parks in Anaheim, or hike up to snap a photo in front of the Hollywood sign. Monterey and Carmel are home to miles of coastline, a wealth of marine life, and world-class golf facilities. Both the San Diego Zoo and the Monterey Bay Aquarium are considered the top wildlife facilities in their categories, home to an incredible array of animals and opportunities to learn about our non-human neighbors. California's miles of farm country mean dining opportunities include farm-fresh, high-quality meat and produce. Foodies can dig into fish tacos in SoCal, munch sourdough bread in San Francisco, or hit the wine trail in Napa and Sonoma.
43 Tours and Activities
Across the bay from downtown San Diego, Coronado is a pleasant escape from the jumble of the city and the buzz of the beaches. Follow the tree-lined, manicured median strip of Orange Avenue toward the commercial center, Coronado Village, around the landmark Hotel del Coronado. Then park your car; you won't need it again until you leave.
Locals call Coronado an island, but it's connected to the mainland by the spectacular, 2.1 mile (3.4 kilometer) Coronado Bay Bridge, as well as by a long, narrow spit of sand known as the Silver Strand. The visitor center doubles as the Coronado Museum of History and Art. And then there's the fabulous, easily recognizable Hotel del Coronado, the interior of which is filled with warm, polished wood, giving the hotel an old-fashioned feel of Panama hats and linen suits. Guests have included 10 presidents and world royalty. For a taste of the Del without the stay, have breakfast or lunch at the beach-view Sheerwater restaurant.
Coronado Tours & Tickets
6 Tours and Activities
On the southern tip of Point Loma, at the top of hill, you'll find Cabrillo National Monument. The spot is San Diego's finest locale for history and fine views across the bay to San Diego's downtown. It's also the best place in San Diego to see the gray whale migration (January to March) from land. After a few minutes here, you may forget you're in a major metropolitan area.
The visitors center at Cabrillo National Monument has an excellent presentation on Portuguese explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo's 1542 voyage up the California coast, plus good exhibits on the native inhabitants and the area's natural history. Also here is the Old Point Loma Lighthouse, which is appointed with late-19th century pieces, including lamps and picture frames hand-covered with hundreds of shells. On the ocean side, you can drive or walk down to the tide pools (at low tide) to look for anemones, starfish, crabs, and limpets.
Cabrillo National Monument Tours & Tickets
Both a seaside community and a top San Diego attraction, there's a lot to be said for this little slip of a peninsula. Most easily recognized for its hilly views and the picturesque Old Point Loma Lighthouse, Point Loma is also famous for its historical significance (the first European settlers in California landed here, thus earning it the title "where California began"). People come to Point Loma to view these attractions, as well as to visit its naval base, the Cabrillo National Monument, and walk the hiking trails and take in the stunning views of the bay. With plenty to do and see, it's no wonder Point Loma is one of San Diego's most photographed spots.
Point Loma Tours & Tickets
247 Tours and Activities
Cinema buffs believe Alfred Hitchcock had it right: seen from below at Fort Point, the bridge induces a thrilling case of Vertigo. Fog aficionados prefer the lookout at Vista Point in Marin, on the north side of the bridge, to watch gusts rush through the bridge cables. Crissy Field is a key spot to appreciate the whole span, with windsurfers and kite-fliers to add action to your snapshots. Unlike the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge provides access to cyclists and pedestrians.
From the Golden Gate Bridge itself, you can see stunning vistas of San Francisco and Marin County, as well as Alcatraz, Angel Island, and oceangoing liners passing through the bridge's tall red towers. Golden Gate Bridge connects the city of San Francisco with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Sausalito and the Muir Woods National Monument.
Golden Gate Bridge Tours & Tickets
One of LA's most distinguishing icons, the famous HOLLYWOOD sign proudly stands on the hillside of the Hollywood Hills, overlooking its namesake city and the movie industry it has come to symbolize.
LA's most famous landmark first appeared on its hillside perch in 1923, as a advertising gimmick for a real-estate development called Hollywoodland. Each letter stands 50 feet (15 m) tall and is made of sheet metal painted white.
Once aglow with 4,000 light bulbs, the sign even had its own caretaker, who lived behind the letter L until 1939. The last four letters were lopped off in the 1940s as the sign started to crumble along with the rest of Hollywood. In the late 1970s, Alice Cooper and Hugh Hefner joined forces with fans and other celebrities to save the famous symbol.
Hollywood Sign Tours & Tickets
1 Tour and Activity
Vikingsholm Castle is a historic mansion and architectural highlight of Lake Tahoe. Located in beautiful Emerald Bay State Park, the majestic home overlooks the lake's scenic Emerald Bay and Fannette Island. Blending seamlessly with its surrounding natural environment, Vikingsholm is considered to be one of the finest examples of Scandinavian architecture in the western hemisphere.
Vikingsholm Castle Tours & Tickets
Marilyn Monroe? 6774 Hollywood Blvd. James Dean? 1719 Vine St. Elvis Presley? 6777 Hollywood Blvd. No, not last known addresses, just the exact spot for the brass star honoring these celebrities on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
These stars and many others are sought out, worshiped, photographed, and stepped on day after day long this stretch of sidewalk along Hollywood Boulevard. Since 1960 more than 2,000 performers - from legends to long-forgotten bit-part players - have been honored with a pink-marble, five-pointed sidewalk star.
Follow this celestial sidewalk along Hollywood Boulevard between La Brea Avenue and Gower Street, and along Vine Street between Yucca Street and Sunset Boulevard.
Hollywood Walk of Fame Tours & Tickets
Stand in the footprints of your favorite silver-screen legends in the courtyard of this grand movie palace. The exotic pagoda theater - complete with temple bells and stone Heaven Dogs from China - has shown movies since 1927. In fact, it's still a studio favorite for star-studded premieres, captivating crowds of all ages.
It's somewhat of a tourist rite of passage to compare your hands and feet with the famous prints set in cement at the entrance court. There are some 160 celebrity squares to discover including R2D2's wheels, Jimmy Durante's nose, Betty Grable's legs, or Whoopi Goldberg's braids. Rumor has it that the tradition was started when silent film star Norma Talmadge accidentally stepped in wet cement the night of the theater's premier of Cecil B. DeMille's King of Kings.
TCL Chinese Theatre Tours & Tickets
Few waterways carry the prestige and iconographic status of the beautiful San Francisco Bay. From the first years of its European discovery the Golden Gate became known as a pivotal access point to the American West.
Trade and military strategy aside, The Bay is California's most important ecological treasure. A natural nursery for crab, halibut, waterfowl, seals and sea lions, as well as endangered species, the San Francisco Bay provides a great ecological treasure to residents and visitors alike. Whale watching, ferrying out to Alcatraz and Marin, or simple sunset tours with the glistening Golden Gate Bridge are favorite pastimes, while residents simply feel assured looking out of their windows and knowing that its calm waters are there.
San Francisco Bay Tours & Tickets
For almost 150 years, Alcatraz has given the innocent chills and the guilty cold sweats. Over the years it's been the nation's first military prison, then a forbidding maximum-security penitentiary, now a National Park. No wonder that first step you take off the ferry and onto 'The Rock' seems to cue ominous music: dunh-dunh-dunnnnh!
The trip to Alcatraz is popular and space is extremely limited. Purchase Alcatraz tickets as far in advance as possible, up to 90 days. The roster of Alcatraz inmates read like an America's Most Wanted list. A-list criminals doing time on Alcatraz included Chicago crime boss Al "Scarface" Capone, dapper kidnapper George "Machine Gun" Kelly, and hot-headed Harlem mafioso and sometime poet "Bumpy" Johnson. Though Alcatraz was considered escape-proof, in 1962 the Anglin brothers and Frank Morris floated away on a makeshift raft and were never seen again. A visit to Alcatraz is more than just seeing the inside of an old prison.
Alcatraz Tours & Tickets
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Essentially a floating city, the U.S.S. Midway Museum is housed inside the namesake ship, formerly one of the U.S. Navy's flagships from 1945 to 1991. Aboard the hulking vessel, visitors can explore more than 60 exhibits as well as peak inside the museum's aircraft collection. Exhibits in the U.S.S. Midway Museum include the engine room, the ship's brig, machine shops, and the crew's sleeping quarters. You'll walk along the narrow confines of the upper decks to the bridge, admiral's war room, and the control tower. On the ship's flight deck, you can walk right up to aircrafts, including an F-14 Tomcat, F-4 Phantom jet fighter, and an A-7 Corsair. Three flight simulators, music videos, films, interactive exhibits, and the Ejection Seat Theater round out this family-friendly experience.
Seaport Village
Seaport Village is San Diego's preeminent shopping and dining complex. A slice of independence in busy San Diego, the Seaport Village is beautiful and relaxing escape in an otherwise busy world. Come here to window shop the boutiques, sit on a park bench and stare into the ocean, grab a bite to eat, or to simply have a glass of wine and catch some outdoor entertainment. Just a short walk from the Gaslamp Quarter and plenty of boutique and big name shopping, Seaport Village is a popular hang-out for tourists and locals alike.
Napa Valley Wine Train
All aboard for the best train in the West! The beautiful and romantic Napa Valley Wine Train takes the most stunning parts of the Napa and Sonoma valleys and sandwiches them together in a spectacular glide through the rolling countryside. Watch the sun set from elegantly restored vintage Pullman cars as you sweep through the wandering valleys of Napa and Sonoma wine country sipping some of the world's best wine and nibbling exotic cheeses. Little could be more breathtaking or romantic than this train ride through some of the world's most famous wineries and some of the most beautiful land in California.
Perfect for those that don't have much time to spend in this little slice of heaven, the Napa Valley Wine Trail gives you a sweeping view of the Napa and Sonoma valleys while regaling you in luxury, history, and of course, superb wines.
Madonna Estate Winery
Located in the world-renowned Carneros region, Madonna Estates is a unique winemaker utilizing dry-farming production and organic grapes. The vineyard is family owned and operated using a combination of traditional and modern winemaking techniques. As one of the oldest vineyards in Napa Valley, Madonna Estates is working to ensure the historic winemaking traditions of the past live on. It was one of the few original vineyards that survived the Prohibition era.
The idea behind their wines is minimal intervention and as much natural growth as possible. Mild fog, wild, and cool temperatures create a unique microclimate in this area, fed with coastal air. Madonna Estates produces ten varietals including Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Pinot Grigio. The tasting room is decorated in Italian Pompeii style to reflect the family's heritage, and the reserve room serves their highest quality vintages.
Monterey Fisherman's Wharf
Just like its San Francisco counterpart, Monterey's Fisherman's Wharf is crammed full of souvenir shops, candy stores, street performers and seafood restaurants all vying for tourist dollars.
Though it is most definitely a crowded tourist scene, Fisherman's Wharf is more than worth a visit for the bay views, sea lion and pelican-spotting, and eating clam chowder from a sourdough bowl. Many restaurants offer free samples of chowder to passersby, so you can compare before settling on a place to eat. Several restaurants also offer more incentives such as free calamari appetizers.
The neighboring Wharf II is the heart of Monterey's fishing industry and you can watch the trawlers unloading the day's catch. Charter boat companies offer deep-sea fishing cruises, and other activities on offer include glass bottom boat tours and whale watching tours.
Maritime Museum of San Diego
For over 60 years, the Maritime Museum of San Diego has enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for being one of the most engaging and imagination-inspiring attractions in San Diego. A history lesson and an adventure in one, the Maritime Museum of San Diego has been repeatedly voted one of the best attractions in San Diego, and visitors from the world over come here to see the excellent collections of historic tall ships, including the world's oldest active merchant ship, the Star of India, an 1863 iron hulled, triple-mast behemoth. Known the world over for excellence in restoring, maintaining, and operating these historic vessels, a trip to the Maritime Museum will have you exploring (and, on some occasions, even sailing) four different tall ships (the ones with the big masts and sails), two submarines, and several yachts and harbor boats. As you explore these amazing vessels, you'll discover a sense of what it was like to work and live on these amazing ships.
Packed into 40 hectares, the San Diego Zoo presents a stunning variety of nature's largest, smallest, noblest, oddest, and most endangered creatures. This famous zoo has more than 3,000 animals representing over 800 species.
Stop first at the San Diego Zoo visitor center to pick up a map. Highlights of the zoo include the Tiger River bioclimatic exhibit, which realistically recreates an Asian rainforest environment, and Gorilla Tropics, which does the same with an African rainforest. The koalas and the rare giant pandas are also popular.
The gardens at the San Diego Zoo are renowned and some of the plants are used for the specialized food requirements of particular animals. Especially for kids, the Children's Zoo allows young ones to pet small critters; they will also enjoy the animal nursery, which shows off the zoo's newest arrivals. For an aerial perspective on the park, take a ride on the Skyfari.
A city within a city, Chinatown is a historic maze of mysterious sights where an ancient culture from the other side of the world survives and flourishes with remarkable authenticity. You enter the oldest Chinatown in America through Dragon's Gate, on Grant Avenue at Bush Street. Once you walk through the gate, a 24-block labyrinth of restaurants, markets, temples, and shops unfolds.
Wander through the massive collection of Chinese artifacts at the Chinese Historical Society of America Museum, or ponder Thomas Chang's monumental photographs at the Chinese Cultural Center. You can glimpse skaters practicing revolutionary moves beneath the stature of Sun Yat-sen in St. Mary's Square or head to Spofford Alley to hear the clicking mah-jong tiles, a Chinese orchestra warming up, or even beauticians gossiping over blow-dryers.
Southern California's quintessential bohemian playground, Venice Beach is a haven for artists, New Agers, homeless people, and free spirits of all stripes. This is where Jim Morrison and the Doors lit their fire, where Arnold Schwarzenegger pumped himself to stardom, and where Julia Roberts and Dennis Hopper make their homes today.
Life on Venice Beach moves to a different rhythm and nowhere more so than on the famous Venice Boardwalk, officially known as Ocean Front Walk. It's a nonstop Mardi Gras of fortune tellers, street musicians, and characters of all colors, shapes, and sizes. This is where to get your hair braided, your karma corrected, and your back massaged qigong–style.
Encounters with hoop dreamers, a Speedo-clad snake charmer and a roller-skating Sikh minstrel are pretty much guaranteed, especially on hot summer days. The Sunday-afternoon drum circle draws hundreds of revelers for tribal playing and spontaneous dancing.
Palace of Fine Arts
Like a fossilized party favor, this romantic, Greco-Roman ruin is the memento San Francisco decided to keep from the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Indeed, the Palace is a favorite wedding photo location for many couples in the San Francisco Bay area. But many come just to simply gaze up at the rotunda relief and glimpse "Art Under Attack by Materialists, with Idealists Leaping to her Rescue".
The exhibition hall, which originally housed Impressionist paintings during the exposition, was once home to the Exploratorium, a state of the art interactive science museum that moved in Spring 2013 to Pier 15 on the Embarcadero. Now the venue hosts occasional concerts and events but is not generally open to the public. The inside is not the main attraction after all.
The nearby lagoon, fringed with Australian eucalyptus trees, was intended to echo those found in classical settings in Europe, where water serves as a mirror to reflect the grand buildings.
Where once Italian fisherman in Genoese feluccas trapped unsuspecting sealife, San Francisco has expertly created one of the most popular tourist attractions in America. Fisherman's Wharf is filled with shops, restaurants, and a pirate's booty of attractions.
Sea lions laze the day away sunbathing and posing for photo ops on Pier 39, where the Aquarium of the Bay, carousel, and carnival-style attractions keep little kids wide-eyed. At Pier 45, the Hyde Street Pier Historic Ships Collection give navel-gazers a chance to check out tall ships, submarines and WWII warships. Bring your quarters to consult the spooky mechanical fortune tellers and save the world from space invaders at Musée Mécanique.
And if it's raining, head to the Wax Museum and wander among the 250-plus life-like celebrities and former presidents. Ripley's Believe It or Not! Museum, with its kaleidoscope tunnel, video displays, and illusions is also a curiously exciting diversion.
The highest measured waterfall in North America, Yosemite Falls is the superstar attraction in the park, especially in late spring when the snow melts and water flow is at its peak. With a cumulative drop of 2,425 feet (739 meters), Yosemite Falls actually consists of three falls and is also the sixth highest waterfall in the world (seventh according to some sources). Though there is some discussion about its place in the world's highest list, it's an incontrovertible fact that Yellowstone Falls is the centerpiece of the valley and the park.
The best views of the cascading torrent can be seen from various vantage points, including Yosemite Village and Yosemite Lodge. For active viewers, a one-mile loop trail leads to the base of Lower Yosemite Fall and also possible to hike to the top of Yosemite Falls as a strenuous, all-day hike. For a unique experience, on a clear night with plenty of moonlight and enough water to create mist.
An overlook with an incomparable view of Yosemite Valley, Half Dome, Yosemite Falls, and Yosemite's high country (stay for stargazing if you have the time), Glacier Point is accessible by car during the summer and by cross-country ski during the winter. Perhaps it's getting to Glacier Point that is half the fun!
During the winter, skiers are rewarded only after a 10.5 cross-country tour; during the summer, hikers can choose from the misleadingly named Four Mile Trail (it's actually closer to five miles long), the nearly nine mile Panorama Trail or, for the truly ambitious, a combination of the two trails, to reach the promontory.
However, if you lack the time, desire or stamina to climb the nearly 3,200 feet (975 meters) above the valley floor, consider the four-hour Glacier Point Tour, which departs daily from Yosemite Lodge.
Once a military base, The Presidio is now a huge public park on the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula. The Spanish established a military fortress on the site in 1776, and it was later turned over to Mexico, and then to the United States in 1848. The original name was the Royal Fortress of Saint Francis, fortress being a translation of "presidio," and the area remained an active base for military operation until 1995. Since 1996, The Presidio has been a park. It's part of the Golden Gate National Recreational Area, but is operated by a private trust.
Among the many outdoor recreational opportunities within The Presidio are hiking, mountain biking, and golfing. The waters just off the park's beaches are great places to go kite surfing or sailing, not to mention fishing. There's also one camping facility inside the park that's open from April-October, as well as one lodge in a former US Army residence hall.
More Tours in California
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Recommended for California


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