LETTERS
Frivolous Lawsuits
In response to your May 5 editorial, “Business and Budgets,” I wanted to provide you with some additional facts.
You stated, “Correa chairs the committee responsible for investigating alleged abuses of consumer protection laws by Trevor Law Group. ” I do chair the Business and Professions Committee, but our committee does not have jurisdiction over Business and Professions Code 17200. B & P; 17200 involves lawsuits and lawyers, which is the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee. However, I did host a fact-finding hearing in January to provide a forum for my constituents being unjustly sued under B & P; 17200.
You also suggest that my reforms could have been more meaningful. Please note that there are numerous B & P; 17200 legislative proposals. Some of your suggestions are already incorporated in other proposals. It is not my practice to take the ideas of other legislators.
I have worked hard to attain a balanced approached. Two important letters of support help explain the merits of my bills.
One letter, from the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, says my bill “limits fishing expeditions and allows timely corrections to possible violations…and provides some common sense protections for businesses…” The second letter, from Mr. Robert Fellmeth, the executive director of the Center for Public Interest Law and a recognized B & P; 17200 expert, says, “AB69 (Correa) represents a positive approach to balancing competing interests and will create a defensible, orderly and constitutionally sound procedure, all without discouraging meritorious suits .”
In addition, the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Retailers Association support my proposed legislation.
Hopefully, this information provides you some insight into the breadth of support for this measure, as well as the effort that has been invested in its drafting. This bill protects honest, hard working business owners, while protecting consumers from unfair and illegal business practices.
Lou Correa
Assemblymember, 69th District
Santa Ana
Miocean Story
Regarding your April 28 article, “Miocean Says Cleanup is Good Business”:
I was appalled after reading this article as it is a misrepresentation of the facts and wrongly portrays the environmental organizations mentioned.
The article portrays Orange County Coastkeeper as an organization that sits on the sidelines and makes noise at city council meetings. This could not be further from the truth. We have established a reputation for proactive programs working together with business, local government and regulatory agencies to resolve issues and develop solutions to the devastating impacts of urban pollution, erosion and degraded habitats.
Two years ago, Coastkeeper funded a project in Buck Gully to divert polluted runoff from the creek to the sewage treatment plant. In Aliso Creek, we introduced Clear Creek systems to the area to pump and filter highly polluted water in the creek at the infamous pipe JO2PO3.
We have developed a method to reforest kelp,habitat to hundreds of species of marine animals,off Orange County’s coastline and have brought government and business together to support the ongoing reforestation program. Today, for the first time in over 20 years, there are giant kelp canopies on the surface of the water at Little Corona and Crystal Cove. Coastkeeper partners worked with the Regional Board, the County Health Agency and cities to conduct extensive water-quality sampling throughout Newport and Huntington Harbors, as well as creeks throughout our watershed, including San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. We maintain our own water quality laboratory. We conduct underwater surveys with our task force of volunteer scuba divers to search for the presence of Caulerpa taxifola (the killer algae) in Newport Harbor.
Most recently, as result of our survey of the three Orange County harbors, Coastkeeper and the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board are working together to write an order for the first time in California establishing standards for the location, number, operation and maintenance of vessel waste pump-out stations.
There are far too many successful partnerships and cooperative action projects to report here. Second, miocean is a new organization on the scene. Great! I am delighted to see them. There are plenty of issues and projects to undertake and we need all the help we can get.
Miocean is certainly not the first organization to take a business approach or focus on immediate action projects with measurable results, but they are certainly encouraged to fulfill their mission.
I have talked numerous times with Paul Makarechian regarding the establishment of miocean. I have always offered Orange County Coastkeeper’s support and, in fact, offered to partner with them on future projects. Clearly, the author of your article took statements out of context. It is unfortunate.
However, in the spirit of cooperatively working together and clearing the air, I want to apologize to the board of directors of miocean for the message conveyed in your article. Anyone familiar with Orange County Coastkeeper knows we don’t sit on the sidelines making derogatory comments about other organizations doing good work. You might want to apologize as well.
Garry Brown
Executive Director
Orange County Coastkeeper
Newport Beach
OC 50
I read with great interest the OCBJ’s May 5 “Profiles of the County’s Most Influential Business People.” I found many of the profiles to be both admirable and inspiring.
However, I have to comment on the profile of Mr. Paul Folino, CEO of Emulex. Was it an error or did he really take home $55 million, or an amount equal to 23% of the company’s revenue in 2001? I understand he is a huge philanthropist,he should be on that income.
I work in the securities industry and having learned this information about the Emulex CEO, I can understand why there is still such resistance and distrust within the retail investment community regarding corporate America. With due respect to the OCBJ, the fact that this piece honored “business” leaders, I am sorry to see him on the top 50 list, regardless of how much he gives to the community. I seriously question his “business” ethics.
Pam Zedick
Dana Point
Editor’s note: The bulk of Folino’s 2001 income came from exercising stock options, not from company revenue. His fiscal 2001 salary and bonus of $935,000 were 0.4% of Emulex’s revenue. The company’s market value has gone from $60 million when Folino took over to $1.9 billion at recent check.
Poison Pen
I am insulted to have been mentioned in the April 28 OC Insider column in the same sentence as Peter Buffa, whose ability to put coherent words together is suspect, not like my own words which are to the point and ever-so-perfect all the time like Ernest Hemingway or perhaps James Joyce and yes I said yes it feels so good yes and tomorrow is not another day it is eternity and the long cool hills and mountains between here and the Coast rise like some great big beast in the morning with bad breath.
Michael Ray
Irvine developer
Laguna Beach writer
