Rental Co. Faces Fine for Failing to Inform Residents of Lead Paint

Rome, New York Rental Company Faces Fine for

Failing to Inform Residents about the Presence of

Lead-based Paint and its Dangers

Contact: Elias Rodriguez, (212) 637-3664, rodriguez.elias@epa.gov

(New York, N.Y. - March 16, 2012) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued a complaint against CRM Rental Management, Inc. of Rome, N.Y. for not informing residents of its buildings about potential lead-based paint in their apartments. It is estimated that three-quarters of U.S. residential dwellings built before 1978 contain some lead-based paint. Infants and young children are especially vulnerable to lead-based paint exposure, which can cause IQ deficiencies, reading and learning disabilities, impaired hearing, reduced attention spans, hyperactivity and behavioral problems. CRM Rental Management faces over $140,000 in potential fines for 43 instances in which the company failed to properly inform residents of four buildings in New Hartford and Rome, New York about the potential presence of lead-based paint.

“Lead paint is a serious threat to children’s health and disclosure can arm families with information they need to protect their kids,” said Judith A. Enck, EPA Regional Administrator. "Rental agents, property managers and building owners are required to follow EPA lead paint disclosure requirements and make sure people are aware of potential lead hazards in homes.”

Lead poisoning remains one of the most prevalent threats to children's well-being but it is also one of the most preventable. Under federal law, families have the right to know whether there are any potential lead-paint hazards in a prospective home, and must be informed about the harm lead can inflict on small children. Pregnant women and children younger than age six are among the most vulnerable to adverse health risks from lead-based paint.

EPA regulations require real estate management companies and property owners that sell or rent housing built before 1978 to provide renters or buyers with a form that contains a warning about the dangers of lead-based paint and discloses information about its presence. People renting or buying an apartment or home must verify that they received the required warning and disclosure information, including the EPA pamphlet, Protect Your Family from Lead in Your Home. Prospective purchasers have a 10-day opportunity to assess the property for risks for the presence of lead-based paint.

The complaint against CRM Rental Management alleges that the company failed to provide residents with lead-based paint warning and disclosure statements, making them aware of records or reports that would alert them to potential lead-based paint hazards, and secure required signatures verifying that the required information was received.

In collaboration with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Centers for Disease Control, EPA operates the National Lead Information Center, including a toll-free hotline that can be reached at 1-800-424-LEAD (5323).

For more information on lead and the risks posed by lead paint, visit: http://www.epa.gov/lead.

Follow EPA Region 2 on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/eparegion2 and visit our Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/eparegion2.

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News Release from IBM - Smarter Buildings

New IBM Smarter Buildings Analytics to Help CFOs Prepare for Major Accounting Shift

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ARMONK, N.Y. - 02 Mar 2012: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today introduced new analytics software to help Chief Financial Officers and real estate executives accelerate preparedness for pending compliance rules for leased assets. More than 92 percent of senior executives surveyed in a new IBM study say they're not yet prepared to address these changes.

Proposed accounting rules from the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), expected to be finalized in 2012, will require a company's leased assets – such as real estate, vehicles and other equipment – to be added to their balance sheet as a capital asset.

This means S&P 500 companies, for example, would have to list the value of their leases on the balance sheet, weighing them down with an estimated average of more than $1 billion in new assets. The pending regulation has the potential to dampen their financial performance as expressed in debt/equity ratios and return on assets. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) estimates the impact of these changes may approach $1.25 trillion dollars for U.S. publicly traded companies.(1) 

IBM today is issuing new software to help companies manage this major accounting change. IBM TRIRIGA software has new analytics that delivers visibility into balance sheet and income statement impact; financial assumptions and audit controls for both real estate and equipment leases; and automates management review and approval processes, specifically to help companies navigate the proposed regulation.

The new software also delivers strategic facility scenario modeling to increase return on leased real property assets. With a global view, the software can:

• Provide operational controls such as critical date alerts, payment processing and financial assumptions for leased real estate and equipment assets in a single technology platform.
• Provide balance sheet and income statement analysis of complex real estate lease decisions, such as 10 years with two renewal options versus 20 years, for instance.
• Help predict future demand for space and display gaps between demand and availability of real estate space.

These types of analytics are critical as an IBM study issued today shows 92 percent of those surveyed believe they are not prepared to implement the pending rules. The IBM survey, conducted by CFO Research Services, a research group sponsored by CFO Publishing, polled 179 senior executives from global companies with revenue in excess of US$1 billion.

Survey Highlights Lease Accounting ChallengesThe IBM survey indicates the proposed rules will require considerable changes to companies' operating and finance strategies. Seventy-nine percent anticipate moderate or substantial changes to accounting policies, processes and practices, while a majority also expects related operational strategies for real estate (53 percent). Sixty-three percent of companies expect changes in information management systems to comply with the pending rules.

Specifically, the new survey, "Beyond the Balance Sheet: Opening the Book on the New Lease Accounting Standards" also found that:

• About half exhibit the most concern over worsening in debt/equity ratios and return on assets.
• Sixty percent say that they will need to make some level of change in planning, budgeting and forecasting systems, while half (49 percent) expect new or upgraded business intelligence systems.
• Sixty percent anticipate the need for changes or new software to enterprise asset management systems, while 56 percent expect to address real estate and facilities management systems.
• Seventy-four percent agree that their companies will need to conduct additional training to adapt to the new lease accounting standard.
• More than half feel they will need significant time to prepare for the proposed standards with 58 percent predicting six months to two years.

"As companies are hit with the new financial regulations, we see that most firms are concerned about their readiness to abide by the lease accounting changes," said George Ahn, vice president of Enterprise Asset Management, IBM. "We predict that the pending IASB/FASB regulations will spark companies to manage their leased buildings, vehicles and equipment as meticulously as they have traditionally managed their overall financial investment portfolio, with an increased focus on asset efficiency. At IBM, we have worked closely with progressive companies to understand the impacts, and are prepared and excited to help companies meet this new need."

Beyond compliance with the proposed regulation, IBM is broadening its reach by making its software available in global languages to increase productivity and ease of use for companies with worldwide operations. This globalization is the next step in accelerating IBM's growth in the smarter buildings market since the company's acquisition of TRIRIGA.

For more information on the lease accounting survey and IBM TRIRIGA software go to:

• http://www.ibm.com/software/products/us/en/subcategory/SW22A
• ibm.com/software/tivoli/lease-accounting

About the Proposed Lease Accounting StandardThe proposed rules are being released by the International Accounting Standards Board and Financial Accounting Standards Board, who are regulators for the U.S., Europe and many other countries.

Companies realize that compliance will take significant effort as it increases the complexity of lease accounting with new requirements for the management and tracking of financial assumptions of leased assets and real estate.

About IBM Smarter BuildingsSince launching its Smarter Buildings initiative in February 2010, IBM has created a portfolio of smarter buildings solutions that integrate with building automation software from across the industry.  IBM's real-time monitoring and analysis, facilities and space management capabilities, and advanced dynamic dashboards helps property owners and managers reduce facilities operations and energy expense, and improve asset management and reliability. Through IBM's acquisition of TRIRIGA, IBM accelerated efforts to bring intelligence in the smarter buildings market. IBM's smarter building solutions help clients listen to data generated by facilities. By collecting, managing, and analyzing data IBM helps clients gain intelligence and insight to energy, space and facilities management. TRIRIGA strengthens IBM's smarter buildings solutions by adding key functions such as real estate, facility and energy management software solutions. 

(1) U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, "Report and Recommendations Pursuant to Section 401(c) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 On Arrangements with Off-Balance Sheet Implications, Special Purpose Entities, and Transparency of Filings by Issuers", page 64,http://www.sec.gov/news/studies/soxoffbalancerpt.pdf, 2005

The Real Way to Build a Network

The February 6, 2012 issue of FORTUNE magazine contains an article with the above title.  The article is an excerpt of a book by Reid Hoffman (partner at Greylock and founder and executive chairman at LinkedIn) and Ben Casnocha (award-winning entrepreneur and author).  Just the first five paragraphs, which appear below, contain considerable wisdom.  Hoffman's and Casnocha's book is entitled, "The Start-Up of You."

Many people are turned off by the topic of networking.  They think it’s slimy, inauthentic.  Picture the consummate networker: a high-energy fast talker who collects as many business cards as he can and attends mixers sporting slicked-back hair.  Or the overambitious college kid who frantically e-mails alumni, schmoozes with the board of trustees, and adds anyone he’s ever met as an online friend.  Such people are drunk on networking Kool-Aid – and are looking at a potentially nasty hangover.

Luckily, building your network doesn’t have to be like that.  Old-school networkers are transactional.  They pursue relationships thinking solely about what other people can do for them.  Relationship builders, on the other hand, try to help others first.  They don’t keep score.  And they prioritize high-quality relationships over a large number of connections.

Building a genuine relationship with another person depends on at least two abilities.  The first is seeing the world from another person’s perspective.  No one knows that better than the skilled entrepreneur.  Entrepreneurs succeed when they make stuff people will pay money for – and that means understanding what’s going on in the heads of customers.  Likewise, in relationships it’s only when you put yourself in the other person’s shoes that you begin to develop an honest connection.

The second ability is being able to think about how you can collaborate with and help the other person rather than thinking about what you can get.  We’re not suggesting that you be so saintly that a self-interested thought never crosses your mind.  What we’re saying is that your first move should always be to help.  A study on negotiation found that a key difference between skilled and average negotiators was the time spent searching for shared interests and asking questions of the other person.

Follow that model.  Start with a friendly gesture and genuinely mean it.  Dale Carnegie’s classic book on relationships, despite all its wisdom, has the unfortunate title How to Win Friends and Influence People.  This makes Carnegie widely misunderstood.  You don’t “win” a friend.  A friend is not an asset you own; a friend is an ally, a collaborator.  When you can tell that someone is attempting sincerity, it leaves you cold.  It is like the feeling you have when someone calls you by your first name repeatedly in conversation.  Novelist Jonathan Franzen gets it right when he says inauthentic people are obsessed with authenticity.

Advertising: Made in America Resonates

Excerpt from an article in The New York Times
Thursday, February 16, 2012

Made-in-America Resonates With Marketers 

By STUART ELLIOTT

BLUE-COLLAR workers in fields like manufacturing — particularly when they make products on American soil — are again becoming a favorite subject for white-collar workers on Madison Avenue.

The trend was born of the economic worries that followed the financial crisis in 2008. Recently, it is gaining steam — appropriate, since the ads often use blasts of steam to signal something is being built — with proposals in Washington to offer incentives to encourage the location or relocation of factories in the United States.

“We continue to see very heavy emotional response to anything that would leverage against the bad economy,” said Robert Passikoff, president at Brand Keys, a brand and customer-loyalty consulting company in New York.

The trend is even extending beyond advertising. For instance, “ABC World News” is running a series of reports under the rubric “Made in America,” in which anchors and reporters celebrate a preference for buying merchandise made in this country.

The most notable moment to date in the trend came on Feb. 5, when Super Bowl XLVI was played, as marketers paid NBC tens of millions of dollars to run commercials with work themes before the game, during the game and during halftime.

Those commercials included spots for General Electric, part of a campaign carrying the theme “G.E. works,” that celebrated products like refrigerators and turbines being built in the United States; a spot that showed a bottle of new Bud Light Platinum beer being produced in a plant that looked more like a factory than a brewery; and a spot for Hyundai, featuring workers employed at its first American factory, in Montgomery, Ala.

Retailers Checking 'Nice' on Energy Savings List

The following was gleaned from a newsletter from the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Retailers Checking 'Nice' on Energy Savings List

December 27, 2011

NREL's Jennifer Scheib checks lighting levels as Rois Langner records them in the grocery section of the SuperTarget in Thornton, Colo. Target is a DOE Commercial Building Partnerships (CBP) Partner.
Credit: Dennis Schroeder

Residential and commercial buildings account for a staggering 40 percent of energy use in the United States.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and its National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are working with the nation's commercial building owners to discover new and innovative ways to reduce commercial building energy use.

DOE's Commercial Building Partnerships (CBP) program is a public/private, cost-shared program that pairs selected commercial building owners with DOE's national laboratories and private-sector technical experts. The goal is challenging, yet simple: new commercial construction is designed to consume at least 50 percent less energy than today's code allows (ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2004), and retrofits are designed to consume at least 30 percent less energy.

The potential energy savings means a financial benefit for companies and consumers alike.

Good for the Earth and the Bottom Line

NREL Engineers Michael Deru, left, and Ian Doebber examine rooftop units at the Thornton SuperTarget. Through its CBP partnership with NREL, the store could potentially save more than 2 million kilowatt-hours of electricity.
Credit: Dennis Schroeder

"An underlying idea with CBP is to demonstrate that energy efficiency makes good business sense," NREL Senior Engineer Greg Stark said. "We are helping the companies develop better stores that use significantly less energy than their current prototypes — and for roughly same cost as their current buildings."

Coming up with energy saving solutions that can be repeated throughout the U.S. is a key CBP goal.