Obamacare and Tax Refunds for Small Businesses

September 4, 2014 by

business (8)According to certain reports by the SEIU.org Ohio ranks 35th.in the nation for health Status. It also states that as the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented, close to a million Ohio residents will gain access to affordable health care. Diabetes, asthma and obesity have plagued the nation in recent years and Ohio is not immune to those health risks. Being able to afford health care is for many individuals a problem of insurmountable proportions and President’s Obama Health Care Act gives them the hope of obtaining health coverage for them and their families this year.

For more news about Ohio, follow the links below.

After delays, Obamacare options for small businesses coming to Ohio soon

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Obama administration has selected Ohio and four other states for what it says is “early” access to an Affordable Care Act program offering health insurance to small businesses.

This will allow businesses with up to 50 employees to look for competitively priced health coverage for 2015 through the Small Business Health Options Program, or SHOP, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The federal SHOP program was supposed to be in place this year but was pushed back amid numerous problems in starting up the ACA’s main program, covering individuals. Some states with their own enrollment processes did not have these problems and were able to start SHOP anyway, but Ohio was one of many relying on the federal enrollment mechanisms.

Small business owners get hefty state tax refunds

The state is refunding millions of dollars to small business owners who overpaid their taxes in previous years and were not aware of the errors.

An Ohio law signed this year by Gov. John Kasich forces the Ohio Department of Taxation to refund overpaid taxes to companies. State officials said so far they have cut refund checks for $29 million.

Previously, if a business wasn’t aware it had overpaid and didn’t request a refund, the money would be held at the department of taxation, and once statutory deadlines passed, the money would roll into the state treasury, officials said.

“It was just wrong. The policy was anti-business. It was terrible, so we have changed it. Who knows how many millions and millions of dollars should have been in the hands of business people across this state for many years and it’s lost forever,” Ohio tax commissioner Joe Testa said.

Down-ticket Dem candidate talks small business in Athens

The Democratic nominee for Ohio Secretary of State, state Sen. Nina Turner, visited Athens Tuesday to meet with various area small-business owners to learn about ways to help if she is elected in November.

Turner, a Cleveland Democrat, said in an interview that she was in Athens to hear the experiences of small-business owners, and hear their ideas about the local business environment and how to improve the Secretary of State’s Business Services Division. She called the division a key component of her plans for the office.

“It was such a pleasure sitting down with these business owners and leaders in their community to discuss the situation on the ground in Athens and learn their stories of starting their businesses and making them successful,” said Turner.

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Ohio’s Unemployment Rate and Other News

August 20, 2014 by

business (4)The national unemployment rate for July was 6.2%, a bit higher than the Ohio unemployment rate of 5.7%. Compared to the 7.5% unemployment rate in 2013, things seem to be going in the right direction for Ohio. And although the recession seems to have slowed lending for small businesses, small business owners are still optimistic that things are heading in the right direction.

To read more about small business news follow the links below.

Ohio jobless rate posts small hop to 5.7% in July

Ohio’s unemployment rate edged up to 5.7 percent in July, as the number of those out of work rose and the total with jobs dropped from the prior month.

The state reported Friday that non-farm employment sank 12,400 jobs from June to nearly 5.3 million last month, helping push up the jobless rate from 5.5 percent in June. About 323,000 Ohioans were out of work in July, the Department of Job and Family Services reported.

The state’s jobless rate in July 2013 was 7.5 percent.

But the state said 24,400 more individuals were working in July than a year earlier. Adding the most jobs over the 12 months was the goods producing sector, up 14,700, and professional and business services segment, up 17,000 positions.

Who’ll pick SC peaches? Immigration policy gridlock stymies farm labor

The heated tempers of the nation’s border states are driving the debate over immigration policy. States such as South Carolina, though, are reckoning with a different set of challenges: a skimpy agriculture labor market and cumbersome immigrant worker programs that go unfixed amid partisan gridlock on Capitol Hill.

Over 20,000 U.S. farms employ more than 435,000 immigrant workers legally every year, according to 2012 U.S. Department of Agriculture census data. Thousands – probably tens of thousands – more are employed illegally. In the fruit orchards of the Carolinas, farmers confront a blue-collar labor vacuum.

“Because we’re not a border state, it’s definitely harder to get people over this far from the border to work,” said Chalmers Carr, the owner of the East Coast’s largest peach grower, South Carolina’s Titan Farms. “2006, 2007, even 2008, we had a very robust economy and there were not enough farmworkers then. And there’s truly not enough farmworkers now, legal or illegal.”

Small-Business Lending Is Slow to Recover

Lending Remains Far Below Pre-Recession Levels; Things ‘Aren’t What They Used to Be’

Small-business lending by banks is rebounding but remains far below prerecession levels, forcing entrepreneurs in places like Carroll County, Ga., to seek other financing sources. WSJ’s Angus Loten joins MoneyBeat with the details. Photo: Carrollton Mainstreet.

CARROLLTON, Ga.—Brandi Shirey wants to borrow at least $20,000 to expand the birthday- and wedding-cake business she started four years ago after leaving her job as a bookkeeper.

Demand for the cakes, which sell for $150 to $500, overwhelms her home kitchen. She plans to use about $2,000 from her savings to move into a nearby storefront next month. But the 28-year-old Ms. Shirey believes her credit record and financial paperwork have to be bulletproof before she dares approach a bank for a loan. “It’s time to grow,” she says, but things “aren’t what they used to be.”

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Effective Meetings – Be Quick on Your Feet

August 13, 2014 by

business (10)There are many trends and fads in business.  Some of them take hold and become part of the status quo and others fade away.  One of the current fads, which may develop into a standard operating procedure, is the concept of stand up meetings.  The idea is developing legs (pun intended) and becoming more common.

While it may be seen as innovative in the sit down meeting business culture it’s not a new concept.  Julius Caesar didn’t allow his commanders, or anyone else, to sit during battle planning strategy sessions in the field.  During World War I some military leaders only had stand up meetings.

The current stand up meeting idea may be traced to a group of software developers.  In 2001 they published the Agile approach to software development.  This method divides projects into smaller and more manageable components.  In daily stand up meetings participants quickly update their peers using 3 criteria: what they’ve done since yesterday’s meeting; what they’re doing today; and what obstacles stand in the way of getting the work done.

One of the objectives of this approach was to drastically reduce or eliminate the long-winded, self serving, CYAing and dishonest reports which are presented in many meetings.  Another goal was to get people to participate, collaborate and be more creative – to stop shopping and playing Candy Crush on their devices.

The preliminary field reports, as well as a small group of research studies, show that stand up meetings meet these goals.  In 1998 Allen Bluedorn, a business professor at the University of Missouri, found that standing meetings were about a third shorter than sitting meetings, while the quality of the decision making was about the same.

A 2014 study by Markus Baer and Andrew Knight, Washington University St. Louis, found that people who stand up in a meeting are more creative, collaborative, pay better attention and less likely to be bored.  They open up and contribute to the discussion more than seated people.  Also, participants were less territorial with their own ideas, while being less critical and hostile towards others suggestions.
(Side bar – In addition to the idea of stand up meetings, managers might consider adopting an overall non sedentary workplace strategy.  Research is showing a correlation between sitting too much and poor emotional, physical and mental health.  The sale of standing up desks has increased dramatically as people become more aware of the benefits of standing vs. sitting during the work day.)

Standing up during meetings, and during the work day, makes good sense and is shown to be an effective business practice on a variety of levels.  Optimistically, it’s a fad that’s on its way to being a standard practice.  After all, the idea worked pretty well for Caesar while he was conquering most of Europe.

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Should Ohio Raise the Minimun Wage Again?

July 15, 2014 by

business (3)The 2014 Ohio minimum wage beginning this past January went from $7.85 to $7.95 a bit more than the Federal national wage of $7.25, and now the small business community supports a higher minimum wage that some experts believe is good for the economy.  For more news about this and other topics follow the links below.

Why we still don’t know how many small businesses signed up through Obamacare

And why it’s probably not very many.  

In contrast to the widely publicized enrollment numbers on the health care law’s individual marketplace, there’s apparently no way to know how many business owners and employees have signed up through the law’s new small-business exchanges.

By all indications, though, it’s not very many.

One House Republican has twice asked federal health officials to provide data on how many owners and employees have enrolled in and paid for plans through the law’s new insurance marketplaces for small businesses. Since the launch last fall, the employer portals, known as SHOP exchanges, have suffered even more technical problems and delays than the exchange for individuals and families.

“The SHOPs opened, although without online enrollment and many promised features, on October 1, 2013,” Rep. Sam Graves (Mo.), chair of the House Small Business Committee, wrote in his latest letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the exchanges. “Over seven months later, we still do not have any federal and some state SHOP enrollment data.”

A Higher Minimum Wage Is Good for Business

Small business owners realize the benefits of higher pay and a stronger consumer class.

Five years ago this month, the minimum wage reached the lofty sum of $7.25 per hour, the last step in a series of increases Congress set in motion in 2007. It hasn’t been raised since, and after taking inflation into account, the minimum has fallen to an adjusted level of only $6.54. That may change soon. Support for a higher minimum wage now comes from an unlikely source: the owners of America’s small businesses, and CEOs of some the nation’s largest and most respected brands. Meanwhile, recently published research shows that wage hikes at a modest level don’t kill growth and jobs. In fact, the states that have raised their minimums have enjoyed above-average economic growth.

Last week the American Sustainable Business Council and Business for a Fair Minimum Wage released a report of a scientific national poll of small business owners. The poll involved a live telephone survey of 555 small business owners, with between 2 and 99 employees each. Respondents spanned the political spectrum, all regions of the country and a broad cross-section of industries.

Net neutrality important to small businesses, customers

Let me offer the following small-business parable:
Lou owns a small business, a pizzeria, in a city with only one highway.
Everyone must use this one highway to get to work, go shopping, see a movie and connect with friends. It’s a critical infrastructure for the whole community.
Lou uses the highway for home delivery of his pizzas and to get supplies for his restaurant.
Until now, everyone in the city could use the highway equally. But the on-ramps to the highway are privately owned.
Even though the highway was built with government money, one day the on-ramp owners decided to create a fast lane. Now you have to pay them a lot to get anywhere if you want to get there quickly.

Lou’s competitors — huge national pizza chains — can afford to pay this toll. But Lou can’t, so he’s always stuck in the slow lane, which is more crowded than ever.

When a football fan orders one of Lou’s pizzas, it arrives in the fourth quarter instead of at halftime. Lou loses a lot of customers because the highway isn’t open to everyone equally.

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Social Intelligence – A Leadership Imperative

July 15, 2014 by

business (7) We all know someone who’s smart, whose intelligence is unquestionable.  Yet, he or she is socially awkward, has few friends and struggles being successful personally and professionally. They often say the wrong thing at the wrong time in social situations because they’re unable to read the crowd.  They usually aren’t achieving what they or others believe is their full potential.

In the past it was thought that a person’s professional and personal potential could be measured and predicted by their Intelligence Quotient (IQ).  But, this theory is limiting and doesn’t adequately identify the diverse human behaviors needed to achieve success.  Intelligence is multidimensional and comprised of different, overlapping and equally important subsets.

Social Intelligence (SI) is one of the subsets and is often referred to as “people skills”.  It used to be believed that people either had them or they didn’t.  Fortunately, while some of the “skills” are innate, SI can be studied, practiced and learned, which is positive news for anyone wanting to be an effective leader.

A successful leader must be able to connect with people, then effectively influence and motivate them to collaborate.  This is accomplished through understanding social and group situations and the dynamics which govern them.  SI is the ability to observe people’s interactive styles and use the knowledge to develop effective strategies, which help a leader achieve his or her objectives though others.

However, SI is not limited to reading other people well.  An influential leader has awareness of and insight into their own perceptions and reaction patterns. Through experience and on-going education they learn to accurately assess the impact of their behavior on others, using this knowledge to lead and inspire.

It’s assumed that people automatically learn to get along with others as they mature and gain experience.  Unfortunately, a quick look around the typical workplace shows this is not the case.  Most people don’t continue to learn and grow as they age – they never acquire the awareness and skills needed to succeed in professional or personal social situations.

Nevertheless, people who lack insight and competence, when interacting with others, can make significant improvements in their SI abilities at any time regardless of their age or circumstances.  And once the basic skills and knowledge are learned they’ll be able to experiment with additional behaviors and new interaction strategies.  Social Intelligence can increase throughout one’s life giving anyone an improved chance of reaching their full potential.

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BWC and Other News

July 8, 2014 by

business (1)News about Ohio and what is happening in the state are important to all of us.  News about the Ohio Bureau of Workers compensation refusal to pay small business across Ohio what it owes them is not only negligent but devastating to the morale of Ohio Businesses and the local economies.  Small business owners deal with a myriad of issues in a daily basis, making government issues not only hard for them to do but impossible to fulfill is an obstacle and encumbrance to the well being of our economy.

Pressure Mounts On Gov. Kasich To Force BWC To Pay Back Small Businesses

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Pressure on Gov. John Kasich to pay back hundreds of millions of dollars to more than 250,000 small businesses is mounting.
An NBC4 investigation into overcharges that sunk thousands of small business across Ohio is now going statewide.

An advertising campaign based on the NBC4 investigation is set to air on TV Friday, asking Kasich to get involved in the payback.

Ron Foreman is front and center in an ad campaign aimed directly at Kasich.

“I gathered my family together and told them, ‘Things are going to have to change because Daddy is going to have to file bankruptcy,'” Foreman said in the commercial.

Kasich plans small-business swing to 3 Ohio cities 

HAMILTON, OHIO: Ohio’s governor will focus on small businesses in a swing through three western Ohio cities.

Gov. John Kasich has Tuesday stops in Hamilton, the Dayton area and Tipp City. The Republican is seeking re-election this November. He will begin the day at Hamilton Caster, a business that makes casters, industrial wheels and other products and dates back more than a century in the Butler County seat.

A campaign announcement with the National Federation of Independent Business/Ohio is planned there. The small business association recently announced its endorsement of Republican Attorney General Mike DeWine’s re-election.

Ohio entrepreneurs should learn about new health coverage options: Grant Lahmann

Pundits and politicians from Ohio to Oregon have spent years bemoaning the new health care law and its impact on the economy, and on small businesses, in particular. But the law has been in full effect for six months now, and the real-life implications of it are anything but dismal.

A recent report shows the Affordable Care Act actually increased the gross domestic product for the first quarter of 2014, and here in the Buckeye State, almost 155,000 individuals, self-employed and small business owners and their workers have already found affordable insurance through the new insurance marketplace created by the health care law.

In case you’re not already familiar with it, Ohio’s marketplace has two branches — one for individuals, the other for small businesses. The individual marketplace is available to any self-employed individual or small business employee whose employer doesn’t offer insurance. Open-enrollment for the individual marketplace is closed, but enrollment for 2015 begins on November 15 this year.

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Small Business News you Cannot Afford to Miss

June 25, 2014 by

business (10)The Small Business Administration office of Advocacy defines a small business as an independent business that has fewer than 500 employees.  This comprises 99.7% of all U.S employer companies and provides almost 50% of the private sector employment in the U.S.  In 2010 there were 27.9 million small businesses, and government agencies and officials realize the importance of this sector for the U. S. economy when dealing with policies and tax breaks.

Read more about this topic by following the links below.

Why Congress can’t afford to ignore small businesses this fall (5 reasons)

Right up there with cheesy slogans and attack ads, praise for small businesses has become a staple of campaign season in Washington.

It’s likely to be the same again this fall, and with good reason. Congressional hopefuls, both incumbents and their challengers, can’t afford to overlook the nation’s smallest employers, not just because the rest of the country has a soft spot for them, and not just because it makes for sound economic policy.

Rather, small business owners themselves represent a key voting bloc — individually not with quite the sway of large corporations, of course, but influential just the same. Here’s why.

1. They vote

Only about three in four eligible Americans are registered to vote, according to most estimates, and barely more than half cast a ballot during the 2012 elections, according to research by the Bipartisan Policy Center.

DCA Commisioner Menin Promises ‘Big Announcements’ on Small Business Fines

City Department of Consumer Affairs Commissioner Julie Menin promised a group of small business owners a series of “big announcements” in the coming weeks around the agency’s inspection and fines process.

Speaking this morning at the annual meeting of the Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District, Ms. Menin pledged to follow through on Mayor Bill de Blasio‘s campaign declaration that he would lessen burdensome regulations on small business owners.

“As a former small business owner, and one who dealt a lot with the DCA, I really know what it’s like to have a DCA inspector come and not know what they’re looking for,” Ms. Menin told the audience of around 50 business owners from the Upper West Side area in the breakfast meeting at Isabella’s restaurant. “We’re already starting to make changes at DCA.”

Even Small Business Owners Can Use These Tax Breaks

Two recent news clips caught my attention. One involved a company trying to avoid the IRS. The other involved the IRS trying to avoid trouble. Taken together, I can see how a small business owner might cynically ask if a small business has a fighting chance as far as taxes.

The first news item was about the latest rage in large company tax planning: “tax inversions.” U.S. companies seek to sidestep U.S. corporate taxes by relocating offshore through foreign mergers. The most recent example is the proposed Medtronic/Covidien merger. Even though Covidien has headquarters in the U.S., officially it is located in Ireland where the top marginal tax bracket is 10% lower than in the U.S. Apparently Medtronic hopes to save taxes by merging with an Ireland-based company.

The second news item relates to an ongoing scandal where the IRS is accused of targeting certain not-for-profit organizations because of their political leanings. The IRS announced this month that it can’t find two years of emails from Lois Lerner (the former head of the troubled not-for-profit tax division) to the Departments of Justice or Treasury. An agency spokesman blames a computer crash.

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Complacency is Not a Successful Management Style

June 23, 2014 by

business (10)“I don’t want to rock the boat”  “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” “This is the way we have always done it.”  “It’s not that bad, let’s just wait and see.”  In today’s tentative business climate who hasn’t heard these statements from their managers.  You’ve probably said some of them yourself.

Over the last several years the workplace has been in transition, managers have hunkered down to wait it out or for it to blow over.  Unfortunately, while waiting, many managers have turned reasonable caution into unproductive complacency.  They’ve become complacent about their current jobs and future careers, no longer innovating for their company or themselves.

Complacency is defined (Merriam-Webster) as: 1. self-satisfaction, especially with one’s merits, advantages, or situation, often without awareness of potential or actual dangers or deficiencies 2. A feeling of unaware or uninformed satisfaction with how things are and not wanting to try to make them better.  It’s an unsatisfying, self-sabotaging, unproductive and potentially destructive way to think and behave.  Here are 6 ways to tell if you’ve become complacent.

You’ve lost your excitement – Have you begun to lose passion for your work?  Or have you already lost it and are no longer excited about your job or career?  Your passion may have disappeared or just gone astray, but either way it’s important to find it again.  Passion fuels excellence, gives you something to strive toward and helps sustain high performance, which makes it worth getting up in morning.

You look for shortcuts – Are you as thorough or detailed as you once were?  Many complacent mangers count on their past successes and good reputations to cover for their current laziness.  They become a liability to themselves and the company.

You no longer invest in yourself – Are you focused on success in your current job and long term career?  Complacent people stop investing time, money and energy to meet their goals and objectives; they no longer strive to improve.  They don’t maintain relationships with in-house and outside colleagues, network or attend trainings.

You’ve stopped learning – Do you think you’ve learned everything you need to know?  Managers who are “know it alls” are particularly dangerous to an organization.  They’re disruptive, negative, poor team players and routinely disliked by their co-workers.

You’ve stopped thinking and disengaged – Have you stopped asking questions and challenging yourself or others?  Complacent supervisors go along to get along.  They specialize in doing only what they’re told to do and bring little value to the company or to their careers. They’re seldom collaborative and do little to move company objectives forward.

You don’t take risks – Are you looking for the next calculated risk that will move you and your company forward?  Risk is healthy and essential in work and in life.  Complacency makes people poor judges of constructive risk vs. destructive risk.

We all have supervised, worked with or for people who are complacent mangers and have been frustrated by this management style.  It’s unsuccessful at its best and destructive at its worst.  It’s highly probably that George Patton was talking about just such a person when he said, “We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people.  Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.”

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Succession Planning – It Ain’t Over ‘Til it’s Over.

June 11, 2014 by

business (11)Your small business has been successful.  It has provided you and your family income and personal satisfaction.  It’s been a good run and you’re ready to move on to the next phase of your life – do some traveling, go fishing and spend time with the grandkids.

About 2 months before you retire you tell everyone the succession plan.  1. The business will provide your retirement income.  2. Your son, daughter and/or key person will take over.          3.  You will have a party, eat some cake and make a speech.  This is the most common succession plan among small business owners.

However, the belief that it’s enough planning and that “everything will work out” is usually wrong.  It rarely works because it’s not actually a plan.  A successful succession plan takes time, money and effort.  It can be one of the most difficult challenges an owner will face.  It’s difficult for a variety of reasons.

The owner may have become complacent over the years and doesn’t want to make the hard management/personnel decisions that need to be made, which are mandatory in a good succession plan.  A poor management choice can close a formerly thriving business in just a few years.

A successful plan needs time and may take over a year to implement.  This can be hard for someone who has a tough time giving up control or is conflicted about retiring.  If procrastination is a part of his management style he may be counting on someone else “to figure it out when I’m gone”.

Finally, outside assistance is essential and many owners find it difficult to see the need for and to ask for help.  Now is not the time for your pride and ego to get in the way.  A good plan requires the input of professionals who understand the management (consultant), legal (lawyer) and financial (accountant) issues.

Because it’s difficult most owners avoid succession planning to the detriment of the company, their employees and their retirement.  Avoidance and passing the buck seldom works and can lead to damaged personal and professional relationships, decreased wealth and closure of the business.  It’s not uncommon for owners to have to come back and attempt to rescue it.

As Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”  A complete, thought out and well executed plan starts well before the actual day of retirement.  This approach provides the needed stability to make a complete transition, one which safeguards the business’s wealth and sustains harmony among the employees.  Successful owners manage the succession plan as they have managed their company, with forethought and good stewardship, right up until the cake and speech.

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Ohio Unemployment

June 10, 2014 by

business (3)The United States unemployment rate for April was 6.3% down from 6.7% back in March.  The April rate is a 1.2% decrease from last year, and it seems it has been steadily decreasing over the last 12 months. In Ohio we are doing a little bit better than the national average. Ohio’s unemployment rate was 5.7 % in April 2014, down from 6.1 % in March.  Small businesses across our nation provide a great percent of the jobs created, and in Ohio small business provide more than half the jobs. Helping them succeed should be a top priority for the Ohio government, and providing them with resources and guidance can make a huge difference.

Read more about business in Ohio by following the links below.

Ohio Growth Summit seeks to unleash job-growing power of small businesses

Fully 99 percent of Ohio businesses have fewer than 100 employees – and though they’re small, they still provide 60 percent of the jobs.

The key to exponential job growth is for public-private partnerships to help micro-companies progress to the 10-99 employee stage, said Jerry Ross, executive director of the National Entrepreneur Center in Orlando, Florida.

“We are a small-business country,” said Ross, opening speaker of the Ohio Growth Summit entrepreneurial conference being held Wednesday and Thursday at Columbus State Community College.

“What we need to do as communities is say, ‘How do we get together to grow our small businesses?’ ” he said. “The leaders need to start talking to each other.”

Ross’s center combines the forces and expertise of 12 different economic development agencies under one roof, including the U.S. Commerce Department, the University of Central Florida’s Small Business Development Center and incubation program, the Orlando chapter of the Score business mentorship group and several minority business associations

SEA Change, a new Cleveland business accelerator, is looking for startups with heart: the Mix

CLEVELAND, Ohio–If you have an idea for a smartphone app or an Internet-based service that could conceivably scale to something big, and make people rich, there are several business groups in Northeast Ohio that might help you get started.

But what if your venture is intended mostly to solve a social problem or better the world? Good luck. There really has not been any place to take such a notion locally–until now.

This week, a group of entrepreneurship enthusiasts will introduce SEA Change, the region’s newest business accelerator and one that aims to add a new dimension to local innovation.

As a social enterprise accelerator, SEA Change will offer training, connections and capital to startups that have humanity at heart, organizers say. Noble ventures could partake of thousands in seed money.

More details will be revealed Friday, when SEA Change is launched at Shaker LaunchHouse, one of the collaborators behind it. And much will not be revealed because no one is quite sure how SEA Change will evolve.

Ohio Business Owner Sentenced For Lapsed Comp Coverage

Columbus, OH (WorkersCompensation.com) – A Ravenna (Portage County) business owner was ordered to pay $3,500 in connection with lapsed workers’ compensation coverage. Ronald G. Larlham pleaded guilty May 12 in Portage County Municipal Court to workers’ compensation fraud, a first-degree misdemeanor.

“Businesses in Ohio cannot operate with lapsed workers’ compensation coverage,” said Bureau of Workers’ Compensation Administrator/CEO Steve Buehrer. “The bureau makes good faith attempts to work with businesses to bring them into compliance, but if unsuccessful, we must take the issue to court to comply with state law and to protect the State Insurance Fund.”

The BWC’s compliance department referred the matter to the Special Investigations Department’s Employer Fraud Team (EFT) after Larlham continued to operate his business, RGS Automotive in Ravenna, with lapsed workers’ compensation coverage. He had failed to work with the compliance department to bring the company’s policy back into compliance. EFT agents then made numerous attempts to bring the company’s policy back into compliance. The case was referred to the Portage County Prosecutor’s Office.

 

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