Starting A Car Rental Business In Memphis
Memphis is the largest city in the state of Tennessee and was established in 1819. It is a port of entry and a rail and air distribution center with a large number of industries. Memphis is the seat of many educational, health, and art institutions. With increasing population, a car rental business is one of the fastest growing businesses. Many people choose to occasionally rent the vehicles rather than put up with high maintenance, repair, and insurance costs of ownership.
Starting a Car Rental Business: You have the option of becoming either a franchisee of any car rental company or buying your own vehicles and entering the market. Both options are now considered.
As A Franchiser:
Auto Hire is a big car rental company that can guarantee good business and opportunity for growth. The company backs all new franchisees with a comprehensive business plan that includes financing arrangements, vehicle leases, training and hiring staff, and marketing. They also have a tie-in with insurance companies to provide replacement vehicles while the insurance firm deals with the aftermath of an accident.
As A Car Rental Business Owner: • Location. It is very important to start the business in a good, central location to generate high customer traffic. Marginal retail locations do not attract many customers. Have your own car hire counter at busy airports, rail stations, or bus depots to attract inter-city travelers.
• Finances. Start with a small, manageable fleet of cars by taking personal bank loans and cash advances on easy collaterals from special state cells for small business entrepreneurs. A good business plan can even get you partners willing to collaborate with finances and expertise.
1. Hiring/Training Staff. It is very important to train first-line staff in the correct handling of customers. If you provide drivers or chauffeur services along with car renting, check the driving licenses. To meet federal standards, as of April 1, 1992, each state must carry out the new commercial driver license program. This includes tests of knowledge and driving skills for certain types of vehicles. Good health, good hearing, vision of at least 20/40, normal use of arms and legs, good manners and etiquette are additional requirements for chauffeurs and drivers.
2. Car Rental Rates. Lease out various types of cars to suit different customers. High-end cars, SUVs, and mid-segment to low-end cars give a wider choice to people. Vary the rates according to the car and the number of days it is rented for. Some car rentals give unlimited mileage on most vehicles as a means of enticing new customers. Some even provide free chauffeur services or expensive cars for important occasions.
3. Tie-In with Local Car Insurance Companies. A tie–in with insurance companies to rent replacement vehicles while they deal with the aftermath of an accident or mishap can be an added attraction.
Starting a car rental business in Memphis, Tennessee, can be a very paying proposition. You have the option of running the business either as a franchisee or as a car rental business. A good business plan and attention to essential details will ensure that your venture is a success.
In the name of the animals: America faces a new kind of terrorism
SIX days after the World Trade Center was destroyed, the New York Stock Exchange rang its opening bell and traders sang “God Bless America” from the floor: They wanted to send a loud-and-clear message to the world that al-Qaeda could not shut down the U.S. economy. Even though the Dow suffered its biggest one-day point-loss in history, the mere fact that buying and selling could resume so quickly marked an inspiring day for capitalism and against terrorism.
It had recently qualified for a NYSE listing and its senior management had gathered on Wall Street to celebrate the occasion. Just a few minutes before the first trades were set to occur, NYSE president Catherine Kinney informed her guests that their listing would be postponed. It was immediately obvious to everyone from LSR what had happened: “A handful of animal extremists had succeeded where Osama bin Laden had failed,” Mark Bibi, the company’s general counsel, would say in congressional testimony the next month.
LSR is better known by the name of its operating subsidiary, Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), which is in the business of testing products on animals to assess their safety and comply with government regulations. Most people probably don’t like to think about what goes on in these labs–vivisections of monkeys, for instance–but they also appreciate the importance of research whose ultimate goal is the protection and enhancement of human health. About 95 percent of all lab animals are rats and mice, but for animal-rights extremists who believe that “a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy” the whole endeavor is deeply immoral. And some of them have decided that because the traditional practices of honest persuasion and civil disobedience haven’t changed many hearts or minds, they must now adopt a different strategy–something they euphemistically call “direct action.” These are efforts to intimidate and harass animal researchers and everyone who comes into contact with them. In recent years, hardcore activists have embraced property destruction and physical assaults. “This is the number-one domestic terrorist threat in America,” says Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican. Keeping LSR off the Big Board probably represents their greatest achievement yet.
he animal-rights movement may be wrongheaded, but there’s no denying that most of its members are motivated by genuine compassion for animals and a sincere commitment to preventing cruelty. There’s also no denying that violence in their name has become a significant problem. Just as the pro-life movement is haunted by the murderers of abortion doctors, the environmental and animal-rights movements are cursed by their own packs of fierce radicals. A year ago, the FBI said that 35 of its offices were conducting more than 150 investigations into “animal rights/eco-terrorist activities.” The number of illegal incidents involving these activities has risen sharply, from 220 in the 1980s and 1990s to 363 in just the last five years, according to a recent report by the Foundation for Biomedical Research, an association of businesses and universities that conduct animal research.
“Other groups don’t come close in terms of the financial damage they’ve done,” says John Lewis, an FBI agent who until recently coordinated federal efforts against domestic terrorism. Not even militants in the mold of Timothy McVeigh, the man behind the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995? “We have an acute interest in all of these groups, but when the rubber meets the road, the eco- and animal-rights terrorists lately have been way out in front.” Lewis estimates that they’ve caused around $100 million in damage, mostly property destruction affecting businesses, much of it from arson. This fall, eleven defendants will face trial in Oregon for causing an estimated $20 million in damage in five states.
Although animal-rights terrorism is fundamentally barbaric, its execution has assumed increasingly sophisticated forms. The campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences began in the United Kingdom seven years ago with the formation of a group called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, or SHAC. Soon after, SHAC recruited members in the United States to focus on an HLS facility in New Jersey, using methods that were deployed to great effect in the U.K. A federal trial earlier this year–perhaps the most important trial ever held involving animal-rights extremism–put the group’s methods on full display.
Many of SHAC’s efforts targeted HLS directly. An electronic attack in 2002, for instance, caused the HLS server to overload. But other confrontations involved HLS employees away from work: cars vandalized in driveways, rocks tossed through the windows of homes, and graffiti messages such as “PUPPY KILLER” spray-painted on houses. Descriptions of these incidents were dutifully posted on SHAC’s own website, often with an unnerving sense of glee. After a tire-slashing visit to the home of one HLS employee, for example, the SHACtivists seemed pleased that “his wife is reportedly on the brink of a nervous breakdown and divorce.” These messages were meant to generate publicity, build a sense of momentum, and serve as models for activists spread across the country. In Britain, one top HLS employee was attacked by a group of hooded men wielding ax handles. “It’s only a matter of time before it happens in the United States,” warns Frankie Trull, head of the Foundation for Biomedical Research. “Everything they do over there eventually comes over here.”
Health Insurance? Forget It - self-employed have few choices in Washington State
Seattle, Wa.
Hillary Clinton and Al Gore, survivors of Bill Clinton’s failed attempt to socialize medicine six years ago, still haven’t given up on the idea of state-backed universal health insurance. Mrs. Clinton promises to make it an issue in her senatorial campaign. In his presidential bid, Gore proposes giving all children a government guarantee of health-care access and argues for a “Patient’s Bill of Rights” granting further new rights to adults, including the right to see a shrink at your insurer’s expense.
But in this, as in so many other things, denizens of “the other Washington”-as locals here call the nation’s capital-live in a kind of vacuum-sealed terrarium separated from the reality of most Americans’ lives. In the Washington that sits on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, socialism in the doctor’s office has run up against a barrier as formidable as the Pacific itself. Call it “reality.” This correspondent happens to have found that out the hard way.
I moved to Seattle recently with a view to making a go of it as a freelance writer. The morning after I pulled into town, I opened the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to discover that I was in deep trouble. I’m someone with an unusually strong interest in staying healthy-okay, okay, I’m a hypochrondriac-so in my mind keeping within easy contact of expert medical attention is second only to easy access to food and water. Medical attention means medical insurance. And as of that very day, in Seattle and most of the rest of Washington State, insurance carriers were no longer going to be writing new policies for self-employed individuals-like me. Employers can still buy group insurance, but if you’re, say, an entrepreneur or a writer on your own and without insurance, you’re out of luck.
Any number of hypochondriacal symptoms presented themselves to me as I read through the news story. Is that a pain I feel in my back? Head? Arm? Stomach area?
Actually, a self-employed person can buy insurance if he’s desperate enough. As an emergency measure, insurance commissioner Deborah Senn has opened the state’s so-called high-risk pool to all comers. This means we can buy the kind of insurance that was designed for people so sick they can’t get insurance any other way, the kind that’s 50 percent costlier than if you got your insurance through an employer. Thanks! So far 18 people have signed up.
What happened to Washington State, where-I thought before leaving Manhattan-the living’s supposed to be so easy, not to mention healthy? Ideologically speaking, the place has a split personality. Evangelical Christians are startlingly prominent. At your nearby, heavily trafficked Starbucks, don’t be surprised to see a twentysomething white guy in grunge attire sitting next to you and, of all things, intently studying the Bible. Even in suburban, upscale Mercer Island, where I live-the socio-economic equivalent of New York’s Westchester County-church parking lots are jammed on Sundays.
Then again, Washington also has a weakness for left-secularism, often in some wacky forms. The lower portion of each afternoon’s Seattle Times front page is apparently reserved for covering this other half of the region’s culture. The big story in this vein last week was a fire-breathing-literally-post-op transsexual who climbed to the top of a utility tower and snarled traffic for hours by shaking his bared breasts and blowing and igniting geysers of liquid propane from his mouth, till cops coaxed him down. In New York, they would have just shot him. His stated purpose: to protest laws against women showing their naked bosoms in public.
In 1993, at the same time the White House was promoting Hillary’s plan, Christian Washington State snoozed as radical Washington State passed the Washington Health Services Act, ClintonCare in miniature. Nine separate health bureaucracies bloomed. An insurance commisionership was inaugurated and Deborah Senn, a regulatory attorney with no health-care experience, elected to the job. The legislation promised reforms in which everybody would be required to buy insurance from one of several government-controlled health plans. Choice in health coverage would be severely limited.
Republicans succeeded in unraveling the Act’s most egregious features, but one reform that survived has contributed to the downfall of the individual insurance market here. Under this provision, nobody can be turned away, and no pre-existing condition can be excluded. Let’s say that an AIDS-infected resident of another state is looking for a more generous health plan. He moves to Seattle. Any health insurer selling policies in King County is obliged to sell him insurance just as it would to somebody in perfect health. Within 90 days, the insurance carrier must begin covering the AIDS patient for all his medical needs and desires.
Alarming losses began to be reported in the individual insurance market: $15.5 million in one year at Blue Cross, $7 million at Pierce County Medical, and so on. Carriers predictably tried to make up for the losses by raising premiums-in a single year, in the case of Pierce County Medical, by as much as 34 percent.
Brief Article - church news-Statistical Data Included
* The Mormon Church has passed the 11 million membership mark, according to the church’s president, Gordon B. Hinckley. Speaking during the semiannual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah, the 90-year-old leader said the church has made “tremendous” progress since its centennial anniversary in 1947, when it had 1 million members, most of them living in Utah. Now, more than half of the church’s membership is overseas; about 5.1 million Mormons live in the U.S., according to church figures. Hinckley said the church’s missionary work brought in 300,000 new members last year.
* The $3.4 million traditional sanctuary of Community Presbyterian Church in Celebration, Florida–the planned community developed by the Walt Disney Company–was not completed without some input from Disney’s chief executive officer. Patrick Wrisley, pastor of the 330-member congregation which dedicated the building on September 17, told Presbyterian News Service that at one point “our plans went all the way up to Mr. [Michael] Eisner for approval, and he made some good suggestions.” That’s not too unusual. It has been reported that Eisner micro-managed some of the smallest construction details of the California Adventure park opening in February next to Disneyland.
* A group of Chicago-area priests is asking Illinois residents to donate expected property tax rebates to a fund that would help provide health insurance for uninsured families. Under the tobacco settlement between cigarette makers and a number of states, Illinois will receive $635 million for health care and antismoking efforts. The state legislature has earmarked $280 million of that settlement for property tax rebates for state homeowners–amounts ranging from $8 to $250. “The rebate offers a great opportunity to help those most in need of health care and satisfy the purpose for which the tobacco settlement was originally intended,” said Larry Dowling of the Association of Chicago Priests.
God or mammon: when religious groups get caught between their principles and their subsidies
THE SALVATION ARMY, with its bells and kettles, is ubiquitous in the Christmas season. In our contentious times, it is also the center of a controversy over religion, public funding for charities, and discrimination.
In May the New Fork Post reported that the Salvation Army, which has provided social services and Christian ministry to the poor around the world for more than 125 years, could be pulling out of New York City rather than provide health insurance benefits to domestic partners of gay employees, as New York City law may soon require. The legislation, passed in May, would require all businesses and nonprofits that have contracts with the city worth at least $100,000 to provide the benefits.
At this writing, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a moderate and generally pro-gay rights Republican, is suing to block enforcement of the legislation, which is also vehemently opposed by Catholic Charities. (One of Bloomberg’s appointees to the city’s Human Rights Commission, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman, resigned from the commission over the mayor’s position on this issue.)
Regardless of how the skirmish is ultimately resolved, the question of whether religious organizations with secular functions will have to sacrifice their traditional moral beliefs to modern anti-discrimination laws will surely remain at the center of the culture wars.
This is not the first time the Salvation Army, which defines itself as an evangelical Christian church, has faced this issue. In 1998 it chose to forgo $3.5 million a year in public funding in San Francisco after the city passed an ordinance requiring all firms with city contracts to offer benefits to their staffers’ domestic partners. In 2001, with similar problems looming in Los Angeles and several other major West Coast cities with legal protections for domestic partnerships, the Salvation Army’s leadership approved a policy that would allow employees in its Western region to buy insurance coverage for one “legally domiciled adult”–who could be a same-sex partner or a relative sharing the employee’s household. Right-wing religious groups such as Focus on the Family and the American Family Association were quick to cry foul, lamenting that the Salvation Army was trying to “ignore the moral standard for behavior set by God.” Faced with the prospect of losing millions in donations from conservative Christians, the national leadership reversed itself and rescinded the policy allowing domestic partner benefits.
A similar conflict has arisen around the issue of insurance coverage for contraception. In California, Catholic Charities sued for an exemption from the state law mandating that employers who provide prescription drug coverage for their workers also cover the cost of contraceptives. The law does contain an exemption for religious employers such as churches. But in May 2004 the California Supreme Court ruled that Catholic Charities was not a religious organization for the purposes of the law: It offers “secular” services such as housing and immigration assistance to people of all faiths, employs Catholics and non-Catholics alike, and does not directly mix its services with Catholic preaching.
The sole dissenter, Justice Janice Rogers Brown, accused the government of “an intentional, purposeful intrusion into a religious organization’s expression of its religious tenets and sense of mission.” Yet one of the ironies of the case is that Catholic Charities had long downplayed its religious mission–in part to qualify for the government funds that make up two-thirds of its budget.
The partnership between religious charities and the state goes back to the 1960s, when, as part of the War on Poverty, the federal government began to dole out grants for social services to community organizations, including churches and church-based groups. The money came with strings attached: It could not go to programs in which secular social services (food banks, homeless shelters, job training programs) were too closely intertwined with a religious mission, such as Bible studies or proselytizing.
The first breach in this wall of separation was made not by theocrats in the Bush White House but by the Clinton administration. The 1996 welfare reform law created a “charitable choice” provision, allowing religious charities to accept various forms of direct or indirect federal subsidy “on the same basis as any other nongovernmental provider without impairing the religious character of such organizations, and without diminishing the religious freedom of beneficiaries of assistance funded under such programs.”
Among other things, these changes meant that government-funded programs could be provided in houses of worship, that religious art could be displayed on the premises of such programs, and that the religious programs getting the money could discriminate against their employees on the basis of religion. (The use of federal funds for proselytizing and explicitly religious missions, however, was still prohibited.) Bush’s much-discussed “faith-based initiative” did little more than take Clinton’s measure a step further by making a special effort to promote religious charities and expanding the range of activities that could be covered under this provision from assistance to the needy to virtually all government-funded social programs.
As the controversy over domestic partnership laws illustrates, the allocation of federal funds to religious organizations raises some tough issues. Should taxpayer money subsidize groups that discriminate against some citizens? Most Americans do not yet see same-sex marriage as a civil right, so the Salvation Army’s refusal to endorse same-sex domestic partner benefits is likely to be seen as a legitimate exercise of religious belief. The same is probably true of Catholic Charities’ anti-contraception stance.
But what if , for instance a faith-based social service refused to hire married women, or refused, on scriptural grounds, to put women in leadership positions? Should religious belief excuse an organization from having to follow laws against sex discrimination, particularly in the public sector? And if so, why should that exemption be limited to organizations with an explicitly religious mission? Why not extend it to the deeply religious owner of a secular business who wants to run his enterprise in accordance with the principles of his faith?
If social conservatives tend to brush aside these questions in their conviction that religion is a socially beneficent force, liberals have their own blind spot, overlooking the fact that nonreligious dogmas in the nonprofit sector can be equally problematic. For nearly three decades, for example, federal and state money for domestic violence programs has gone to feminist groups whose missionary zeal fully matches that of any church. These programs not only serve as vehicles for a narrow sectarian ideology; they also habitually discriminate on the basis of gender, both in the provision of services and in employment.
In 1998, Independence House, a battered women’s program in Massachusetts that has had longstanding service contracts with the state Department of Public Health and Department of Social Services, appointed a man, Richard Costa, as its new director. The decision caused an outcry from activists who accused the agency of betraying its feminist roots, sparking several resignations from its board. (Costa was dismissed six months later.)
Partnerships in which public funds for social services are allocated to privately run programs are often seen as a semi-libertarian solution to the problem of the welfare state. But in religious or secular guise, such entanglements pose thorny problems. Taxpayers can be forced to subsidize religiously or ideologically driven programs they find objectionable; private groups can be compelled to compromise their beliefs and their mission.
What’s more, the government gets to decide which private organizations and which beliefs will receive its imprimatur. Suddenly, the privatization of the welfare state looks more like the bureaucratization of charity.
Crisis in the Catholic Church - Church And State
The Catholic Church sex abuse scandal has been a major story in the media for the past few months. Each day seems to bring new allegations by the laity against their trusted mentors. The scope of clerical pedophilia is likely to have a far-ranging impact on law enforcement, criminal justice, and the financial structure of the Catholic Church and other institutions.
State legislatures already seek to tighten laws requiring churches to report suspected abusers to law enforcement and to close the loopholes that allow perpetrators to escape justice, including extending statute of limitation laws. But beyond the legal ramifications, the Catholic Church in particular faces a potential financial crisis. Pay-off costs to victims and their families are estimated to already range from $600 million to $1.3 billion. And since many settlements are sealed by the courts and issued under gag orders, the full extent of the financial drain on church resources may never be known.
The National Conference of Catholic Bishops, held semiannually, has debated this issue since the mid-1980s, but the present scandals demonstrate that their policies haven’t been effective. Over a decade ago insurance companies began to reevaluate their policies toward churches and the clergy. In fact, a Louisiana abuse case–the subject of Judgment, the 1990 HBO made-for-TV movie in which a Catholic priest was convicted for molesting altar boys and sentenced to twenty years at hard labor without possibility of parole–was responsible for many insurance carriers no longer offering malpractice insurance to dioceses. And those which continue to do so are making rates prohibitive.
All of these financial difficulties make one wonder if churches will seek more public funds for church schools and charities to make up for their losses due to lawsuits and declining revenue from angry and disillusioned parishioners. Will the U.S. Catholic financial crisis spill over into the public realm, affecting legislative coffers? Or will government become more wary of giving economic carte blanche to faith-based institutions that are relying increasingly on taxpayer support?
It should be noted that the clerical sex abuse controversy affects other religious and secular groups, not just the Catholic Church. Two rabbis and cantors in New York and New Jersey face trial on sex abuse charges. A Southern Baptist preacher in South Carolina was sentenced to a lengthy prison sentence for multiple abuses, and a Lutheran pastor in Texas is likely to be arraigned on harassment charges. And one of the first cases to establish a precedent in this area of law was in 1992 when the Episcopal diocese of Colorado was successfully sued by a woman who was a victim of sexual abuse by a priest at the cathedral in Denver. In that case, the diocese was held responsible for the misdoings of one of its clergy.
Professor Charol Shakeshaft of Hofstra University points out in a forthcoming book that 15 percent of U.S. school children are sexually harassed or abused at some point during their childhood and that 5 percent of teachers have been guilty of such offenses. Previous books have detailed widespread sexual shenanigans among local Boy Scout leaders. The major difference between these offenses and those committed by clergy, however, is that laypeople found guilty of sex abuse of minors are usually removed from society and turned over to the criminal justice system. Clergy, on the other hand, historically have been quietly transferred to another diocese or district, where they escape punishment and remain free to commit the same crime again.
Today, the Catholic Church is employing a new and rather divisive strategy toward the mounting allegations of clerical abuse. Of the 194 dioceses across the United States, many now facing criminal and civil actions have decided to fight the charges with high-powered legal action. And contrition for serious errors of judgment on the part of church hierarchy and appeals for public forgiveness have been replaced by countercharges of culpability aimed at the victims and their families. Some diocesan attorneys are even advising Catholic schools and charities to divide assets among shell corporations to protect against claimants. Cardinal Edward Egan of the once-powerful and feared New York Archdiocese has even claimed that priests are “self-employed contractors working for autonomous parishes.”
National studies show that the majority of American Catholics blame the church hierarchy for the coverup of clerical transgressions and for refusing to face the realities of human sexuality. But so far calls–even from within the hierarchy itself–for reform, including the abolition of mandatory clerical celibacy and the ordination of married men and women to the priesthood, continue to fall on the deaf ears of the Vatican. But a massive overhaul of church structures may be impossible to repel as the loss of moral authority causes American Catholics to pay less attention to church pronouncements on social and political matters and impacts church-state relationships throughout the world for years to come.
Brief Article - church news-Statistical Data Included
* The Mormon Church has passed the 11 million membership mark, according to the church’s president, Gordon B. Hinckley. Speaking during the semiannual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah, the 90-year-old leader said the church has made “tremendous” progress since its centennial anniversary in 1947, when it had 1 million members, most of them living in Utah. Now, more than half of the church’s membership is overseas; about 5.1 million Mormons live in the U.S., according to church figures. Hinckley said the church’s missionary work brought in 300,000 new members last year.
* The $3.4 million traditional sanctuary of Community Presbyterian Church in Celebration, Florida–the planned community developed by the Walt Disney Company–was not completed without some input from Disney’s chief executive officer. Patrick Wrisley, pastor of the 330-member congregation which dedicated the building on September 17, told Presbyterian News Service that at one point “our plans went all the way up to Mr. [Michael] Eisner for approval, and he made some good suggestions.” That’s not too unusual. It has been reported that Eisner micro-managed some of the smallest construction details of the California Adventure park opening in February next to Disneyland.
* A group of Chicago-area priests is asking Illinois residents to donate expected property tax rebates to a fund that would help provide health insurance for uninsured families. Under the tobacco settlement between cigarette makers and a number of states, Illinois will receive $635 million for health care and antismoking efforts. The state legislature has earmarked $280 million of that settlement for property tax rebates for state homeowners–amounts ranging from $8 to $250. “The rebate offers a great opportunity to help those most in need of health care and satisfy the purpose for which the tobacco settlement was originally intended,” said Larry Dowling of the Association of Chicago Priests.
Louisiana UMC bishop sees huge money toll
Destroyed churches cannot take up collections, at least not to the degree needed to pay pastors’ salaries and meet other needs, says United Methodist bishop William W. Hutchinson of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Hutchinson told United Methodist News Service that in a worst-case scenario the state conference of more than 90 churches will have to pay out $1.1 million. “That is a huge undertaking which the conference does not have in reserve funds,” he said. He predicted a $700,000 shortfall for the rest of this year and probably an added $1.7 million deficit in 2006.
The third large problem is the cost of insurance deductibles for church property in New Orleans Parish, which is valued at more than $100 million. Complicating the dilemma, the news service reported, is that many district records were destroyed in the flood caused by Hurricane Katrina.
Chicago archdiocese gives accounting of sex abuse costs - Church In Crisis
In a comprehensive report on its response to clerical sexual abuse of minors, the Chicago archdiocese said financial costs for such misconduct over the past decade totaled $16.8 million, of which $2.8 million was covered by insurance.
Its review board, formed in January 1993, found 55 allegations against 36 priests credible, but none of the incidents happened since 1991. Of the accused priests, eight are dead, nine have resigned and 19 have been removed.
The report, released at a news conference Jan. 16, was one of several recently issued by dioceses around the country.
At a news conference releasing a similar report Jan. 12 in Tucson, Ariz., Coadjutor Bishop Gerald Kicanas said that “bankruptcy has to be one of the options” the diocese considers as it deals with debts incurred last year to settle 11 lawsuits. Local newspapers have estimated the undisclosed amount of the settlements to be about $15 million.
Last May the Belleville, Ill., diocese headed by Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, took the lead in giving a financial accounting of the costs of responding to clergy sexual abuse. It gave a nine-year breakdown of costs and the uses to which the funds went.
The financial section of the 14-page Chicago report shows that from fiscal year 1993 through fiscal year 2002, which ended July 1, the archdiocese spent $7.9 million in assistance to victims and settlements, $4.6 million for the treatment, monitoring and transition of priests, and $4.3 million in legal expenses. More money was paid out in the earlier years than the later years, although costs rose again in 2002.
Most of the money–$15 million–came from a fund set up for that purpose, using the proceeds from the sale of undeveloped property. That fund ran dry in 1999, and the archdiocese is now trying to replenish it by selling more property.
Of the $4.3 million in legal expenses, $1.3 million was spent to defend a priest and a school principal who were found to be innocent in a civil trial, the report said.
It said, “While the officials of the archdiocese of Chicago acknowledge that even one incident of clerical sexual abuse is one too many, this report demonstrates that the efforts of the archdiocese during the past 10 years to address this issue have resulted in three significant realities.
“First, no priest with a substantiated allegation of clerical sexual misconduct with minors is engaged in any form of ministry in the archdiocese of Chicago. Second, officials of the archdiocese have shared files on all allegations with appropriate public authorities and will continue to do so. Third, the archdiocese of Chicago continues to do everything it can to ensure the safety of children in its parishes and schools.”
In the report’s case study, a historical breakdown showed that of the 55 cases found credible by the review board since it was formed in 1993 four involved incidents that happened before 1961; 12 occurred from 1961 to 1970; 29 from 1971 to 1980; and 10 from 1981 to 1990.
George cautioned that this does not mean there have been no incidents since then, only that they have not been reported.
“The victims’ groups say it takes a longer time” for victims to feel comfortable coming forward, the cardinal said. “To say that you’ve eliminated sin is a big, big claim, and I don’t want to make that claim.”
Tucson Bishop Manuel Moreno and his coadjutor, Kicanas, gave a financial accounting Jan. 10 in a special report posted on the diocesan Web site.
They said they could not give out figures for last January’s settlement with 11 victims because not all the plaintiffs had released them from confidentiality agreements signed in the settlements. The U.S. bishops have since then adopted a national policy barring such confidentiality agreements “except for grave and substantial reasons brought forward by the victim/survivor and noted in the text of the agreement.”
Apart from those suits, they said, in the past 10 years the Tucson diocese spent about $1.5 million in costs related to clergy sex abuse, they said.
They broke this down into $155,000 in settlement of eight claims, $115,000 for counseling of victims, $215,000 for evaluation and treatment of accused priests, $622,000 for sustenance for priests removed from ministry and $470,000 for legal fees.
They said insurance paid additional amounts in settlement claims, for counseling of victims and in legal fees, but they did not say how much.
During a news conference on the report and the diocese’s current financial situation–which includes a debt of more than $4.3 million and a deficit of $7.1 million in unrestricted net assets-Kicanas acknowledged that bankruptcy was a possible option. “We do not have unlimited resources. … It’s an option we have to consider,” he said.
In a nine-year accounting last May, Gregory said sexual abuse of minors by priests had cost the Belleville diocese $2.8 million from 1993 through 2001.
Of this, he said, about $1.5 million went to living expenses of suspended priests, $324,000 to therapy for priests, $417,000 to therapy for victims, $9,000 to therapy for others, $334,000 to professional and legal fees and $203,000 to settlement payments to victims. Insurance covered an additional $345,000 in legal fees, it said.
Faithful Customers; Church Mutual Insurance credits 95% retention
A small oversight led to a big disaster for Evangelical and Reformed United Church of Christ in Waukesha.
One day in December, Advent candles were left burning on the church’s altar after a funeral. The unattended candles started a fire that destroyed the church. When the blaze was under control and the damage was plain to see, Pastor James Gorman went home about midnight and sent an e-mail to the congregation’s insurance agent, informing him that the church had burned down.
By 8 a.m. the next day, the agent for Church Mutual Insurance Co. had called and began explaining the claims process and “holding our hands and getting us through,” Gorman said. The church received a $3.3 million insurance settlement from Church Mutual and, with the help of gifts from the community and the congregation, is planning to construct a $4 million church on the same site.
“They’ve just been great,” Gorman said of Church Mutual.
The fire in Waukesha was one of about 2,200 fire or lightning- strike claims last year for Merrill-based Church Mutual. It was, as Church Mutual Chief Executive Officer Gerald Whitburn put it, an opportunity for the company to deliver on the product it sells: a promise to help when a trouble occurs.
Selling such promises, Church Mutual already the largest insurer of religious organizations in the nation reached a major milestone in the first quarter of 2006. The company topped $1 billion in assets, an achievement it celebrated at the company’s 160-acre home office campus last week.
Whitburn, who also is chairman and president of the company, said much of the growth stems from customer loyalty over the years. Church Mutual has been providing insurance since 1897, when it was started by two pastors in Merrill with the financial backing of several businessmen. Today, it insures about 95,000 religious institutions in all 50 states.
“A consistent 95 percent retention rate has been a major driver of this growth,” Whitburn said.
But growth also has come as the religious landscape has changed in the United States over the last 30 years or so. There are more religious institutions and more large churches, which means more insurance opportunities.
There are about 300,000 churches of various sizes in the United States, according to Scott Rolfs, managing director of the church and school financing division of Ziegler Capital Markets Group in Milwaukee.
“It’s been an evolving phase of religion in America, with most of the traditional Protestant denominations doing well, new non- denominational entities evolving and also the movement toward mega- churches,” Whitburn said. “We are beginning to write more of the increasingly large facilities where several thousand people or more worship each week.”
The move toward bigger churches has played a role in Church Mutual’s growth because larger churches tend to have more programs and, as a result, more liability risks.
The company insures synagogues and mosques as well as churches and religious schools, camps, colleges and senior living centers.
Along with coverage for relatively minor incidents and injuries, Church Mutual provides insurance for tragedies ranging from drownings during church-sponsored activities to sexual misconduct to major natural catastrophes such as hurricanes.
In 2005, Church Mutual had losses of $150 million on more than 2,000 claims from damage related to Hurricane Katrina and other hurricanes. The year before, it paid claims of $115 million on four hurricanes that hit Florida.
Whitburn said harsh weather in recent years and demographic changes pose challenges not just for Church Mutual, but all insurers that do business in hurricane-prone areas.
“We’re in a recognized period of more volatile weather patterns that impact America’s coasts at a time when residential and commercial development in coastal areas has never been stronger,” Whitburn said.
Conservative investments
Despite the large hurricane claims in 2005, Church Mutual posted net income of $36.1 million, up from $21.5 million a year earlier. Overall, Church Mutual added 7,200 houses of worship as customers in 2005.
It also maintained its A+ rating by A.M. Best Co., a firm that gauges the financial strength of insurers. It has kept that rating for more than five decades.
Whitburn, a Merrill native who served as secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Health and Social Services under then-Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, said the company has taken a conservative approach with the investment portfolio that comprises most of Church Mutual’s $1 billion in assets.
“Ninety-two percent is conservatively invested in highly rated fixed-income bonds. Less than 9 percent is in common stocks,” Whitburn said.
Largest private employer
In north-central Wisconsin’s Lincoln County, Church Mutual is the biggest private employer. Almost 550 work at the home office, which last summer opened a 70,000-square-foot addition.
“And these are good jobs. They are white collar, good-paying jobs,” said John Mulder, administrative coordinator of Lincoln County.