BUSINESS DIGEST || New car czar Jay Williams meets with Delphi group

Williams meets with Delphi group

YOUNGSTOWN

Former Youngstown mayor and current U.S. auto czar Jay Williams said his meeting Friday at the George V. Voinovich Government Center with some Delphi retirees was “productive” and that he plans to take the information he learned back to Washington.

The retirees saw their pensions cut by 30 percent to 70 percent when their plans were turned over to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. after the company’s bankruptcy in 2009.

They’ve fought for years to regain full pensions and benefits but still are in litigation.

Bruce Gump, vice president of the Delphi Salaried Retirees’ Association, said he hopes the situation can be rectified during the trial phase this spring.

Guilty plea in illegal dumping

WAYNESBURG, Pa.

The former owner of a southwestern Pennsylvania wastewater firm pleaded guilty to dumping millions of gallons of water containing natural-gas drilling wastewater, sewage sludge and restaurant grease into streams and mine shafts in a six-county area.

Robert Allan Shipman, 50, of New Freeport, which is about 70 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, also pleaded guilty to theft for taking money from his customers, who believed their waste was being properly disposed of, The Observer-Reporter of Washington, Pa., reported Friday.

As part of Shipman’s guilty plea in Greene County, he has sold his interest in Allan’s Waste Water Services Inc., and will pay a $100,000 fine and a $25,000 nondeductible donation to an environmental group.

Spain OKs reforms

MADRID

Spain’s new conservative government approved sweeping labor-market reforms Friday as part of a drive to revive a sick economy and solve Europe’s worst unemployment nightmare — a jobless rate of nearly 23 percent.

The plan is designed to encourage companies to hire more people by cutting government-mandated severance packages and offering tax breaks for taking on young people. But the fast-track approval of the measures generated violent clashes between riot police and protesters who say they will be stripped of cherished worker benefits.

Ethics panel looks at rep’s stock trades

WASHINGTON

A new ethics investigation of the House Financial Services Committee chairman’s investment activities during the events leading up to and surrounding Congress’ $700 billion bailout of Wall Street sets back lawmakers’ election-year efforts to rebound from their record low standing with the public.

Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., confirmed Friday that he is being investigated by the independent Office of Congressional Ethics.

Bachus has been the financial-services panel’s chairman since January 2011 when Republicans retook control of the House. Before that, as the committee’s senior GOP member, he participated in closed-door briefings in September 2008 by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warning that Wall Street and the economy were in danger of a complete meltdown.

Vindicator staff/wire reports