Obamacare and small businesses

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) It's been uttered by every opponent of health care reform: Obamacare will kill small businesses.

But the new law's rules don't apply to the vast majority of small businesses. The employer mandate, which forces firms to start providing insurance in 2014, pertains only to companies with at least 50 full-time workers.

That's a tiny fraction of small businesses.

As of 2010, there were roughly 5.7 million small employers, defined as those with fewer than 500 workers. Some 97% of them have fewer than 50 employees. That means Obamacare's employer mandate applies only to 3% of America's small businesses.    

If they don't provide insurance, businesses with 50-plus workers face $40,000 in penalties and $2,000 for each additional full-time employee.

However, nearly all of those businesses already do provide insurance: 96% of those with 50-plus workers currently offer health plans anyway, according to government data.

That most businesses affected by the mandate already provide insurance doesn't necessarily mean their insurance is good enough or sufficiently cheap under new Obamacare rules. That's the counterpoint made by U.S. Senator John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming.

"The mandates are for a lot more coverage than the average person would want, need or can afford. The business is going to have to spend time, money and have to figure that out," Barrasso said.

But there are signs that most plans out there qualify under Obamcare's other requirement. More than 99% of those in work-sponsored plans have insurance that meets most Obamacare coverage standards, according to last year's study by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center.

Putting it all together, the data shows that only a tiny sliver of the nation's small businesses face the new rules -- and even fewer face any changes. Of the country's 6.5 million workplaces, only 1% must actually start providing insurance next year.

tornado hits Oklahoma City

Moore, Oklahoma (CNN) -- Amid downed power lines, hissing gas pipes and immense devastation, rescuers searched "board by board" Tuesday for survivors and victims of a massive tornado that pulverized a vast swath of the Oklahoma City suburbs.

It was a daunting task. The Monday afternoon storm carved a trail through the area as much as two miles wide and 17 miles long, officials said. Hardest hit was Moore, Oklahoma -- a suburban town of about 56,000 and the site of eerily similar twisters in 1999 and again four years later.

The scene -- block after block of flattened homes and businesses, the gutted remains of a hospital and hits on two elementary schools -- left even seasoned veterans of Oklahoma's infamous tornadoes reeling.

The devastation was so complete, Moore Mayor Glenn Lewis said city officials were racing to print new street signs to help guide rescuers and residents through a suddenly twisted and unfamiliar landscape.

Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb likened the destruction to a "two-mile-wide lawnmower blade going over a community."

water bill rising

Anne Niethammer and other homeowners at her East Oahu condominium complex were just getting used to higher water rates put in place in 2012 when she noticed another change on her bill earlier this year.

In a transition from its previous two-month billing cycle, the Hono­lulu Board of Water Supply in January began collecting a fixed "billing" charge on a monthly basis, effectively doubling the amount paid by consumers.

Niethammer and most other Board of Water Supply residential customers used to pay the fee — currently $7.02 — once every two months. Now they pay it once a month.

"It really caught us off guard," Niethammer said. "It's a huge new source of revenue for them. Instead of $7 times six months, it's now $7 times 12 months," she said.

The seven-member Board of Water Supply board of directors voted in November 2011 to double the billing charge for most residential customers as part of a five-year rate-hike plan that went into effect in January 2012. The BWS held off on doubling the billing charge until January of this year, when it switched to the new monthly billing cycle, said BWS spokes­woman Tracy Burgo.

The additional revenue from the billing charge will be used to cover the cost of a new billing system, maintenance and repairs to automatic meter-reading equipment, new customer services such as online bill-viewing and bill-paying, and other expenses, Burgo said. The BWS has more than 170,000 customers.

"I know this is a difficult situation, and we do empathize with our customers," Burgo said. "We are customers, too."

The bad news for BWS customers is that the billing charge is going to continue to rise. Beginning July 1 the now-monthly fee goes up to $7.70; to $8.44 on July 1, 2014; then to $9.26 on July 1, 2015.

In January 2012, when bills were sent out every two months, the fee was $6.40, rising to $7.02 six months later.

The increase in the billing charge is the smallest part of three BWS bill increases customers are absorbing. The water portion of the bill and the sewage portion are also increasing.

In 2011 the board approved a 70 percent increase in water rates over five years. In 2010 the City Council approved a 29 percent increase in sewer fees from fiscal 2011 through fiscal 2016.

The increases in water, sewage and billing charges combined will push the average bill for a household using 13,000 gallons of water a month to $190.57 a month by fiscal 2016, from $155.63 a month today.

The BWS decided to switch to a monthly billing cycle in the midst of the increases. That was done for several reasons, including allowing the BWS to more quickly identify unusual water usage resulting from leaks, said Burgo. The new billing cycle also allows customers to "better align" their water/sewer bill payments with other bills, according to the BWS website.

Mark Sanford

Former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is the guy who told his wife he was going for a hike and then went to Argentina to see his girlfriend. He was exposed as an unethical, lying, cheating weasel. In a stunning comeback, he has been elected to Congress, where he’ll fit right in.

-- Jay Leno, Tonight Show

Stephen Colbert’s whole world has been rocked by his sister Elizabeth Colbert Busch’s loss to Mark Sanford in this week’s special election in South Carolina’s First Congressional district.

That’s the way Mr. Colbert acted on his show Wednesday night in any case, and we have to say it was so convincing there seemed to be truth peeking out from behind his blustering on-screen persona.

“Tonight I am angry, and for once that doesn’t make me happy,” he said. “My sister lost. How could this happen? I was so sure Lulu had won, because CNN called it for Sanford.”

As a result, Colbert said he was renouncing his South Carolina-hood, and becoming a North Carolina Tar Heel, “whatever the [bleep] that means.”

Then he renounced the renunciation after tasting North Carolina barbeque, which he described as a “sauce-less, vinegar-based meat product.”

a new day (or not)

After approving generous pay raises for themselves, state administrators, judges and unionized public workers, legislators failed to pass a promised hike in the state's $7.25-an-hour minimum wage. It set the theme for this year's Legislature: Let them eat our shorts.

The so-called "bird poop bill" to regulate the feeding of wild birds on private property died when House and Senate negotiators couldn't agree on its wording. It was only a matter of time before our legislators made it official that they can't get their poop together.

-- Dave Shapiro, 5/5/13