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More than a year after the devastating Camp Fire, government agencies should not be trying to take money that has been put aside for thousands of victims burned out of house and home to rebuild, according to a San Francisco Chronicle editorial. Pacific Gas & Electric Company, the utility that’s been named responsible for igniting historically calamitous wildfires in 2017 and 2018, declared bankruptcy nearly a year ago. The process has been tumultuous, and one of the reasons why is the unusually large number of creditors seeking to be made whole in any company settlement. Instead, both state and federal government agencies have stepped forward with their hands out, pushing for claims that would total more than half the pot, according to the editorial. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is among the federal agencies demanding some $4 billion. California state agencies are also asking for more than $3 billion. All the agencies say they need the money to cover their expenses for firefighting and clean-up. PG&E agreed to pay $1 billion to 14 local governments to cover their wildfire damages. These claims are unrelated to that settlement. There is little doubt that these government agencies incurred major costs in the course of their duties to protect the public and clean up the terrible after-effects of wildfires. But there’s even less doubt that they should not be seeking to take money from the very victims they have been charged to protect.

Boeing Co. is considering plans to raise more debt to bolster finances strained by the grounding of its 737 MAX, the Wall Street Journal reported. The aerospace giant isn’t running out of cash. Boeing had about $20 billion in available funds at the end of the September quarter, according to the company’s financial statements. But costs associated with the MAX crisis are rising. Boeing faces compensation claims from airlines and families of the 346 victims of two MAX crashes over the past 15 months. This month, Boeing halted production of the plane, lowering some costs but pushing back the likely date at which payments for finished planes would resume. Analysts expect Boeing to raise as much as $5 billion in additional debt to help cover expenditures that could top $15 billion in the first half of this year. In addition to spending on maintenance for the MAX’s stalled production facilities and finished planes, the company plans to close its $4 billion acquisition of an 80 percent stake in the Brazilian plane maker Embraer SA ’s commercial airliner business. Boeing also has to repay some existing debt and fund shareholder dividends.

A California bankruptcy court has sided with electric utility PG&E Corp. in its fight with bondholders over the interest rate that it must pay on its debts while under bankruptcy court protection, the Wall Street Journal reported. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali on Tuesday ruled that the bondholders are owed the federal rate of 2.59 percent, a decision expected to reduce the company’s interest burden by about $550 million when it exits bankruptcy. A committee of bondholders including Elliott Management Corp. and Pacific Investment Management Co. argued they were owed accrued interest at the original contract interest rate—as much as 6.05 percent on bonds due in 2034. Prices of the company’s 2034 bonds fell about 1.6 percent to 104.75 cents on the dollar after the decision, according to data from MarketAxess. Bondholders also contend that PG&E must pay them a premium if it retires debt they own early, or leave the bonds outstanding at the contract interest rate. Such an interpretation would make the 2034 bonds worth over 120 cents on the dollar and increase overall bondholder recoveries by about $1.5 billion. A hearing on the issue is scheduled for January.

Americore Health and its four affiliated hospitals in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas entered chapter 11 protection on Dec. 30, Becker's Hospital Review reported. The bankruptcy petitions state that three of the hospitals — Ellwood Medical Center in Ellwood City, Pa., St. Alexius Hospital in St. Louis and Izard County Medical Center in Calico Rock, Ark. — each entered bankruptcy with less than $50,000 in assets and less than $50,000 in liabilities. Pineville (Ky.) Medical Center's assets total between $1 million and $10 million, and its liabilities are within the same range, according to the bankruptcy petition. Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Americore's affiliate hospitals have faced financial troubles for months. Most recently, Ellwood Medical Center shut down Dec. 10, laid off 152 employees and fell behind on payroll. Read more. 

For more on hospital and health care insolvencies, be sure to pick up a copy of the ABI Health Care Insolvency Manual, Third Edition from the ABI Bookstore. 

The Boy Scouts of America hired a former energy executive as chief executive, reaching for an external leader as the organization struggles to attract a new generation of youth and navigate a wave of sex-abuse lawsuits, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The organization’s national executive board named Roger Mosby, the longtime top human-resources officer at energy company Kinder Morgan Inc., as CEO and president, according to a memo sent Sunday to Boy Scouts volunteers. His hiring comes at a crisis point for the Boy Scouts as the group faces a growing number of lawsuits alleging sexual misconduct by employees and volunteers, fueled by state laws that have extended the statute of limitations for victims to sue. The organization is also confronting declining membership numbers and shifting cultural norms that are testing its place in American society. To stay relevant, in recent years it has opened its doors to girls, transgender youth and gay scout leaders. Some of those efforts have alienated one of its core partners, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is officially parting ways with the Boy Scouts on Tuesday.

For the past 15 years, PG&E has plotted a round trip from one bankruptcy to another, according to a Wall Street Journal commentary. In between, it navigated the aftermath of a catastrophic natural-gas pipeline explosion and a series of increasingly demanding green-energy mandates from state regulators. Managing that push and pull would have challenged any company. It proved to be especially challenging for a plodding utility undergoing management upheaval, heavily regulated and saddled with aging, neglected equipment. Executives were so focused on the past and the future that the present sneaked up on them. PG&E’s electric lines, after years of deferred maintenance, were threatening drought-parched California. When the Camp Fire started to burn in late 2018, eventually killing 85 people, it was the first of four fires that PG&E reported it sparked that day. It was its 408th of 2018, and the 1,961st since record-keeping started in mid-2014.

Victims advocates had long criticized the Roman Catholic Church for not making public the names of credibly accused priests, the Associated Press reported. Now, despite the dioceses’ release of nearly 5,300 names, most in the last two years, critics say the lists are far from complete. An AP analysis found more than 900 clergy members accused of child sexual abuse who were missing from lists released by the dioceses and religious orders where they served. The AP reached that number by matching those public diocesan lists against a database of accused priests tracked by the group BishopAccountability.org and then scouring bankruptcy documents, lawsuits, settlement information, grand jury reports and media accounts. Church officials say that absent an admission of guilt, they have to weigh releasing a name against harming the reputation of priests who may have been falsely accused. By naming accused priests, they note, they also open themselves to lawsuits from those who maintain their innocence.

PG&E Corp.’s creditors have sweetened their offer to California wildfire victims, saying they are now prepared to pay $13.5 billion in cash upfront, according to a letter sent on Friday to state governor Gavin Newsom (D), Reuters reported. Current terms of the settlement deal, approved by a U.S. bankruptcy judge on Tuesday, call for half of the settlement to be financed with stock in a newly reorganized PG&E. In the letter, the bondholders led by Elliott Management said their latest proposals will make sure individual victims “are prioritized, as they should be” and will address demands Newsom had raised earlier. Newsom said on Dec. 13 that the settlement had lacked major changes in governance and tougher safety enforcement mechanisms mandated under the state wildfire statute. It would also leave the company with a weakened capital structure and “limited ability to withstand future financial and operational headwinds.” The new plan calls for no debt at the reorganized holding company and a new board with residents from California forming the majority of directors. It also allows for a takeover of PG&E by the state if the company is found to have caused any single future wildfire that destroys more than 5,000 structures. Read more. 

Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the utility arm of PG&E Corp., has reached an agreement with several customer advocacy, labor and safety groups that calls for state regulators to allow the company to pass on to consumers some rate increases to fund safety improvements and other wildfire-prevention efforts, the Wall Street Journal reported. Friday’s agreement backs an increase in the average monthly bill of a PG&E residential customer by $5.69 a month, representing a 3.4 percent bump. The proposed rate change would take effect in 2020. PG&E will still need the approval of assigned administrative judges and the California Public Utilities Commission before enacting any changes. Read more. (Subscription required.) 

Purdue Pharma LP’s billionaire owners went on the offensive against what they call unfair press treatment that’s based on the false assumption they helped trigger the U.S. opioid epidemic, Bloomberg News reported. The Sackler family, whose bankrupt company developed the OxyContin painkiller, asked Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in New York on Friday to let it make public a 580-page presentation, outlining its factual and legal defenses, that was shown to Purdue’s creditors on Dec. 6. The Sacklers have been accused of causing a national epidemic that’s led to more than 400,000 deaths, in part by overseeing a deceptive marketing campaign that pushed doctors to overprescribe OxyContin and downplay its highly addictive nature. Purdue’s proposed grand settlement of 2,700 lawsuits, valued at $10 billion, is being undermined by the false narrative about the Sacklers, the family said in its filing. The family has committed to contributing at least $3 billion and to handing over ownership of Purdue to a trust for the public benefit, a commitment it now says is being interpreted unjustly as a sign of guilt.