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Comments on the Role of the Modern Charitable Health Care Providers
Get PDFAs was indicated earlier, my name is Karl Emerson and I am the Directorof the Pennsylvania Bureau of Charitable Organizations. The Bureau is thestate agency responsible for administering Pennsylvania’s Solicitation ofFunds for Charitable Purposes Act. 1 This is the statute that governsorganizations soliciting charitable contributions from Pennsylvania residents,businesses, and/or private foundations. Pennsylvania’s solicitation statute issimilar to the solicitation statutes of 38 other states and requires organizationssoliciting charitable contributions in Pennsylvania to typically register withthe Bureau prior to soliciting. 2 Registration usually involves the organizationsubmitting a registration statement; a copy of its IRS 990 Return; a copy of itsaudited or reviewed financial statements; and copies of its Articles ofIncorporation, By-Laws, and IRS Determination Letter. 3 The Bureau thenmakes this information available to the public through our toll-free number,our website, and otherwise
Federal Wetlands Jurisdiction – The Quagmire of Rapanos v. United States
Get PDFFederal jurisdiction over wetlands under the Clean Water Act (“CWA”) 1 has always been difficult to delineate. Wetlands, by definition can be difficult to classify as either water or land. The CWA attempts to regulate these areas; it prohibits discharge of material without a permit into “navigable waters,” which are in turn defined in section 1362(7) of the CWA as the “waters of the United States.” The Army Corps of Engineers 2 is charged with granting permits, and must make the determination of whether or not certain areas of wetlands fall within the jurisdiction of the CWA.3 The Corps has interpreted the phrase “navigable waters” very broadly to include waters “which are currently used, or were used in the past, or may be susceptible to use in interstate or foreign commerce.”4 The tributaries of any of these “waters” also fall within the Corps’ jurisdiction.5 Intrastate waters are covered if their “use, degradation or destruction . . . could affect interstate or foreign commerce.”6 Wetlands “adjacent” to waters, such as those described above, except waters that are themselves wetlands, also clearly fall within federal jurisdiction under the CWA.7 Jurisdictional problems arise however when there are bodies of water or wetlands close to but not directly connected to navigable waters. These areas may still have significant impact on the neighboring navigable waters if a developer fills them in, or an industrial site discharges pollutants into them. Thus the Corps of Engineers has sought to regulate some of these wetland areas, in order to hold true to the CWA’s overall goals “to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters
Fat and Fried: Linking Land Use Law, The Risks of Obesity, and Climate Change
Get PDFAmong the major immediate risks faced by the United States are the increasing rate of obesity of its population and a wide range of potential adverse climate change impacts such as the rising of sea levels, which could result in more extreme flooding and droughts. 2 This article draws from the growing interest in the law and policy of disaster response and risk response3 generated in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Its focus is the use of law to induce the adaptation of societal behavior to minimize the long-term costs of the two serious risks4 rather than on post-disaster relief. Specifically, this article examines how one set of policy instruments, land use planning and regulation, can help to minimize the costs of these inevitable risks. Obesity and global climate change are here, although their specific impacts are still hard to predict. The basic argument is that spatial planning may help mitigate the two risks and the costs associated with them, even though spatial planning and land use regulation are relatively limited policy instruments to deal with these maddeningly complex social and political problems for two primary reasons. First, the law faces structural barriers; in the main, land use law is designed to produce a “one-off” solution to mitigate a nuisance-like use rather than to produce long-term substantive results. Second, efforts to induce behavioral change challenge the deep-seated value of freedom to live where and how one wants as the quote from the director of disaster relief in Kansas indicates. Nonetheless, the effort is worth making as there are clear links between land use regulation and these two risks
Regulation of Emission of Greenhouse Gases and Hazardous Air Pollutants from Motor Vehicles
Get PDFoai:ojs.pjephl.law.library.pitt.edu:article/1Emissions from motor vehicles of toxic and hazardous air pollutants, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases1-emissions that currently are not regulated under the federal Clean Air Act2-are receiving increasing attention at both the federal and state government levels as government officials and members of the public express increasing concern that these substances may pose as much of a threat to public health and welfare as other pollutants from motor vehicles which currently are regulated under the Clean Air Act.Many scientists are reporting a "25-year trend of rising globaltemperatures" and "other dramatic signs of global warming, such as the record shrinkage of the Arctic sea ice cover and unprecedented high ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico."3 Many people attribute global warming to emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases resulting fromhuman activities such as the burning of fossil fuels by power plants and motor vehicles.4 Scientists recently have found that the year 2005 was the hottest year on record for the Northern Hemisphere, with temperatures approximately1.3 degrees Fahrenheit above historical average temperatures.
Drawing Boundaries for Air Quality Control Under the Clean Air Act: The Importance of NOT Being Nonattainment
Get PDFMuch has changed with regard to air pollution control since 1970 whenCongress revised the Clean Air Act to assume a form that, in very broad terms,it retains today. From a legal point of view, while states1 still retained at thattime wide-ranging discretion to design the regulatory controls necessary toattain the air quality goals of the Act, that discretion was significantly limitedwhen Congress revisited the Act in 1977. State discretion diminished to aneven greater extent, particularly with regard to the air pollutants ozone, carbonmonoxide, and particulate matter, when President George H.W. Bush signedthe Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990
Navigating in Uncertain Waters: 2006 Update on the Regulation of Ballast Water Discharge in the United States
Get PDFEvery day more than 10,000 marine species are swept up in the ballast water of ships and make their way across the globe. 1 When discharged into non-native waters, these species are able to damage infrastructure, disrupt commerce, out compete native species, reduce biodiversity, and threaten human health.2 The ecological losses are difficult to quantify; however, the direct and indirect economic costs have been measured at billions of dollars per year in the United States alone.3 Recognizing the severity of the problem, Congress directed the Coast Guard in 1996 to administer a ballast water program and issue guidelines.4 According to various interest groups, the aquatic invasive species problem persists today despite Coast Guard involvement because of inherent and technological limitations surrounding ballast water management (BWM).5 However, other groups believe that the crux of the problem is that the Coast Guard has simply not acted aggressively enough to address the problem. In March 2005, an environmental advocacy group, joined by six states, convinced a federal district court for the Northern District of California that the EPA had exceeded its statutory authority by exempting the discharge of ballast water from the control of the Clean Water Act (CWA)6 in the case of Northwest Environmental Advocates v. EPA