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In some cases, government agencies formalize the notion that an accuser should leave, or risk collecting any settlement. |
Sacramento State agreed in 2015 to pay an employee $123,000 to settle his lawsuit, alleging that he had been sexually harassed by the university president’s son. The employee agreed to resign – and to never apply again for a job within the California State University system. |
Jeffrey Sharp filed a lawsuit in March 2013, alleging that Alexander Gonzalez Jr. touched him and made offensive comments when they worked together in the Office of University Advancement, which raises funds for the university. According to his lawsuit, Sharp said he had experienced retaliation from his supervisors for... |
The agreement limited comment from the parties, said Sharp’s attorney, Jack Vetter of Sacramento. |
Toni Molle, a spokeswoman for the CSU system, said it is not standard procedure for a university to require that an accuser sever ties to reach a settlement. |
Fields described Leonard Johnson III as relentless, unable to take no for an answer, and she complained to her superiors, public documents show. Fields and her husband, Mark, a retired CHP officer, contend that the internal investigation dragged out for months, and that Carmyn was retaliated against by being repeatedly... |
Johnson, a data processing manager, eventually admitted in an internal investigation that he had indeed sat in Fields’ lap and touched her hair but characterized his actions as “joking around,” the investigative records show. He denied trying to kiss her. |
Johnson recently declined to speak with The Bee about the case, saying the experience was painful for him and his family and he was “very embarrassed.” He was demoted by the CHP in May 2013 and later moved to the Franchise Tax Board and then the Department of Health Care Services, where he is not a supervisor, accordin... |
However, state worker pay data shows that his annual salary climbed by $25,400, a 41 percent increase, between 2012 and 2017. His current salary at the Department of Health Care Services, where he moved in August, is $87,900 a year. |
Fields, 53, no longer has a paycheck after the state insisted it would not settle her lawsuit without her agreeing to sever her ties with the CHP and retire, said Fields and her attorney, Andrea Rosa. |
Fields said she was devastated, having finally landed a promotion at a CHP office in South Los Angeles. Her husband also was working in Southern California, she said, and they welcomed an end to a commuter marriage. She described her brief experience in the Torrance office as collegial and supportive. “I was doing very... |
The state did not. Late last year, Fields settled her lawsuit for $600,000. |
Like other plaintiffs, she said much of the money paid her legal costs and lost income. |
Nancy Kathleen Finnigan, a longtime Capitol employee, said she was given no options after she complained about inappropriate work behavior. She was fired. |
Finnigan, who was legislative director for former Assemblyman Steve Fox for about five months before being dismissed, said she could feel her immediate supervisor turn against her after she began to complain. |
She sued the Assembly, Fox and others and eventually settled for $100,000. In the suit, Finnigan said she repeatedly reported to her supervisor, chief of staff Ann Turtle, that Fox was asking her to perform personal tasks during and after business hours, such as paying his rent and cleaning his apartment to prevent him... |
“He was enjoying the pomp of the Legislature, but not being serious about the work,” Finnigan said. |
In the most egregious incident, Finnigan said, she drove to Fox’s apartment one morning to pick him up for session because he overslept. When Fox opened the door, his pants were unzipped and he was not wearing underwear, Finnigan said in her lawsuit, and he exposed himself to her. |
Finnigan said she was reluctant to report the event, but she eventually told Turtle what happened because she wanted someone to talk to Fox for her. |
Instead, Finnigan felt that Turtle turned the complaints around and made the mounting problems seem like her fault, as a way to push her out of the office. In one episode described in the lawsuit, Finnigan said Turtle began screaming at her, throwing things around the office in rage and then burst a plastic bag against... |
“The harshness of the words, just the treatment in general, you know when someone’s going to try to get you terminated,” she said. |
Finnigan said she went to the Assembly Rules Committee, which functions as the human resources department for the lower house of the Legislature, to report Turtle. She said she no longer felt safe and wanted to be transferred. |
Within weeks, she was fired. |
In court papers, the state contends that Finnigan was fired for “failure to adequately perform her job” and that she had not been subjected to any harassment. Before being fired as Fox’s assistant, she had been terminated in January 2012 by then-Assemblywoman Betsy Butler, according to legal documents filed by the stat... |
Finnigan had been first hired by the state Assembly in 1999 but “as her experience grew, her attitude suffered and (Finnigan) assumed an air of entitlement,” the state wrote. |
“She became resistant to feedback, had a tendency to make unilateral decisions without permission and against instructions, and exhibited little sense of team loyalty critical when working for elected officials,” the state wrote. |
Finnigan said the Assembly could not prove those allegations, which is why her lawsuit was allowed to proceed. |
Fox and Turtle declined to comment. |
Finnigan said her experience shows the lack of protections for legislative staff, who work at will for lawmakers. Finnigan said she was particularly offended during a final performance review when she was criticized for allowing her two children to meet her at the office each day after work for a ride home. |
“That kind of irrational thought process on their end – talking about my two minor charges, as if they weren’t welcome in the building – was so inappropriate,” she said. |
Finnigan said she repeatedly was pressured to sign paperwork agreeing to never work in the Assembly again, which she refused to do. |
Are all men really pigs? Or does it just seem that way lately? |
Good day, everyone, and welcome to the PAA & PAGP third quarter 2018 earnings call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Roy Lamoreaux. Please go ahead. |
Thank you, Anne. Good afternoon and welcome to Plains All American third quarter 2018 earnings conference call. The slide presentation for today's call can be found within the investor relations news and events section of our website at plainsallamerican.com. During our call, we will provide forward-looking comments on... |
A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures can be found within the investor relations financial information section of our website. We do not intend to cover PAGP's results separately from PAA's since PAGP's results directly correspond to PA's performance. Inste... |
Our call will be hosted by Willie Chiang, Chief Executive Officer, and Al Swanson, Executive Vice President, and Chief Financial Officer. Additionally, Harry Pefanis, President and Chief Commercial Officer, Jeremy Goebel, Senior Group Vice President Commercial, and Chris Chandler, Senior Vice President Strategic Planni... |
Thanks, Roy. Good afternoon to everyone and thank you for joining our call. Let me begin by hitting the high points of the information we released today. As outlined on slide three and as Al will discuss in more detail, this afternoon we reported solid third-quarter results that meaningfully exceeded our expectations. ... |
Al will provide an update to our preliminary guidance for 2019, which reflects continued momentum in S&L and remains in line with our prior expectations for fee-based growth after adjusting for our recent sale of a 30% interest in the BridgeTex Pipeline, which was executed after we provided our preliminary guidance for... |
The fundamentals for our industry are constructive, global demand continues to grow, and the US leads the world as the largest and most visible source of growing liquid supply. In this regard and as illustrated on slide four, we anticipate crude oil production growth across multiple North American basins over the next ... |
Additionally, we expect increased activity in other key producing regions, including the Eagle Ford, Rockies, Williston, and Mid-Continent, which should drive increase flows to key US market centers including Cushing, Oklahoma. This is driving demand for new takeaway solutions that our existing system is well positione... |
The potential expansion of our diamond pipeline capacity would be coupled with a project to extend the pipeline a relatively short distance to connect into cap line. These potential projects leverage existing systems to provide efficient solutions at attractive returns and would be incremental to our current guidance i... |
In total, we expect full year Permian tariff volumes of slightly less than 3.8 million barrels a day, the impacts of the partial BridgeTex sale, and timing of completion activity, are partially offset by the earlier in-service timing of Sunrise. For the fourth quarter, we expect a meaningful uplift in Permian tariff vo... |
We also continue to make good progress on the balance of our capital program. Construction of our Cactus II pipeline is on track with partial and service targeted for late third quarter 2019 and full service by April of 2020. Additionally, our multiple gathering system expansions and intra-basin debottlenecking project... |
The project will be anchored by ExxonMobil and we continue to work with third-party shippers on additional commitments. We are also finalizing commercial agreements and working through joint venture documents. As announced earlier, Lotus Midstream, which recently acquired the Centurion Pipeline system, an additional mi... |
Thanks, Willie. As Willie mentioned, our third quarter results exceeded our expectations primarily due to strong performance in our S&L segment. This strong S&L performance is primarily the result of favorable regional basis differentials in Canada and in the Permian as well as the one-time $20 million audit recovery r... |
As shown on slide eight, we increased 2018 adjusted EBITDA guidance by $150 million to plus or minus $2.55 billion driven by our strong third quarter performance and our expectation for stronger than previously anticipated results in our S&L segment through the balance of the year. I will also point out that our update... |
Our updated 2018 implied DCF guidance is approximately $1.84 billion with approximately 1.68 billion to common unitholders resulting in implied DCF per common unit of $2.31. This represents a $0.49 per unit or a 27% increase over 2017. Retained cash flow for 2018 is expected to be approximately $810 million. I will als... |
On our August earnings call, we discussed directional fee-based guidance for 2019 of 14-15% growth over 2018 guidance up $2.225 billion, which equated to approximately $2.55 billion. And we also indicated that our 2019 S&L performance would likely outperform 2018 S&L guidance which was $175 million result being total a... |
We expect 2019 fee-based segment adjusted EBITDA to increase plus or minus 12% year-over-year, which equates to plus or minus $2.46 billion. This is essentially unchanged from our previous 14-15% fee-based growth guidance as adjusted for the BridgeTex sale. We expect all of this fee-based growth to be driven by our tra... |
Directionally, that would place total adjusted EBITDA at plus or minus $2.8 billion. Although we have the potential for some upside in our S&L segment in 2019, we anticipate this segment will return to a lower level of adjusted EBITDA in 2020 as we expect both Permian and Canadian differentials to narrow as new pipelin... |
As illustrated on slide nine, at September 30, PA had a long-term debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio of 3.9 times and a total debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio of 4.0 times. These metrics are closer to our targets and with the total debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio being down 1.5 times from a year ago. As Willie mentioned, we expe... |
We plan to provide an update on our capital plans in conjunction with updating our full year 2019 guidance on our February call. As we come closer to completing our deleveraging plan, we wanted to share some thoughts on how we plan to manage our distribution going forward. Multiple factors the board and management will... |
Thanks, Al. As you can see, it continues to be a productive time for our organization. And as summarized on slide 11, we're really pleased to be making meaningful progress toward each of these 2018 goals. Before opening the call for questions, I wanted to acknowledge and thank Greg Armstrong, Co-Founder and 26-year CEO... |
As we look forward, we acknowledge the recent industry cycle and the steps we've taken to position the company for the future. We continue to invest in our business through the cycle while sharpening our focus on operations accents, portfolio optimization, and continue to advance multiple initiatives to further improve... |
This should provide us with significant financial flexibility enabling us to self-fund the equity portion of our routine growth capital programs while delivering attractive DCF per unit growth over time. All that said, we remain intensely focused on the safe, reliable, and responsible execution of our business plan, wh... |
Thanks, Willie. Now as we enter the Q&A session, please limit yourself to one question, one-follow-up question, and then return to the queue if you have additional follow-ups. This will allow us to address the top questions from as many participants as practical in our available time this afternoon. Additionally, Brett... |
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, you may need to lift your handset before making your selection. Again, it's *1 if you have a question at this time. We'll take our first question from Jeremy Tonet with JP Morgan. |
Good afternoon. I just wanted to start off with Sunrise here. It seems like you got 350,000 barrels a day capacity online the quarter. I was just wondering if you could provide a bit more detail I guess on how that's flowing. You said I think there's 220 of takeaway from there -- 120 into Cushing, 100 to other Valero r... |
Part of commissioning Sunrise in October full operations with the generators in November, initially we thought takeaway capacity would be around 200-250,000 barrels a day. It's probably around 300-350,000 barrels a day. We developed a few more markets out of Wichita Falls area. The pipeline can move about 500,000 barre... |
An obvious initiative for us is to continue to find those additional markets downstream Wichita Falls. So using the map between 500 at a capacity to where we are today is the opportunity set going forward. |
That's very helpful, thanks. I wanted to just touch on S&L here real quickly. I know it's a smaller part of the business but the numbers stepped up a bit there. Just trying to get some hands around what this looks like. And just wondering, is this kind of more front half of they are weighted as far as what you see for ... |
There are some wide dips up there. What can you sketch as far as the composition? And when you get these super-sized earnings, you talked about reducing debt or funding capital or increasing the dividend. Any thoughts to maybe putting it back into buybacks when it's kind of one-time in nature? |
Were you talking about 2019, Jeremy, on your particular? |
Yeah, I mean it was for 2019 in particular, just trying to get a feel for the guide of front and half weighted but also just philosophically in S&L. Could buybacks come into the picture there or anything else you can share in those thoughts? |
Let me start off with the S&L numbers and then Harry and Al can jump in there as they see fit. When we started the year, I think we all shared that we did not expect the margins to get -- or the differentials to really widen until the back half of the year. So we kind of went into the year with that thought that fourth... |
And if you think about the differentials in S&L, that happens when there are constraints in pipelines. So our view of 2019 is there's a limited amount of takeaway capacity that comes online really until our Cactus Pipeline starts up late third quarter. So there are opportunities there to be able to capture some arbitra... |
So this is really an opportunistic period of time that allows us to capture some of that value. On the flexibility of buybacks, I don't want to get into commitments on what we're gonna do but I think the message you should take from this is by having this financial flexibility it gives us a number of different options ... |
Great. And just to clarify the one point on S&L for 2019, sounds like it's normal ratability across the year with seasonality as we've seen in the past. It's not weighted toward the first half versus the second half? |
Not necessarily. If you just look at the curve in the Permian, the second quarter's probably the weakest quarter of the year. Fourth quarter, the market's sort of pricing in that some of the pipes aren't gonna be in service and it's compressed. So there's definitely gonna be a curve to the Permian differentials. |
If you look at Canada, the differentials are wider in the first few months of the year than they are for the balance of they are so there's obviously some contemplation that some of the turnarounds or other impacts the market might outweigh the market as much as they do next year so it's a mixed bag but it's probably m... |
And Jeremy, don't forget we still do have a seasonality to the NGL portion of our business. But as Harry said, you've got that crude differential overlay on that. You'll still see some seasonality between first and fourth quarter based on the NGLs. |
And Jeremy, I'd just add one follow-up on the point Willie answered on using S&L to buyback. Clearly, maybe at some point in the future, but our first focus is the balance sheet. I did mention that we expect our '19 capital program to increase and clearly those would be the first priorities within the excess S&L profit... |
We'll go next to Tom Abrams with Morgan Stanley. |
Thanks, guys. I was just looking at your page five graph of all the map of all the pipes and just wondering if your comments on Permian to Houston line, looking for additional partners? If that implied that maybe some of the other projects out there that are also looking for additional partners may end up combining wit... |
Jeremy, why don't you take that. |
Yeah, I would say our first and foremost we're looking at -- we have an attractive project with Exxon supply, Exxon's in demand, we have liquidity from plains in Lotus. We have enough to make the project go on our own. We're looking for third-party shippers. We really can't comment on speculative concepts about merging... |
I don't know if I get a follow-up or not but I wanted to ask about a lot of crude coming in through the Houston area? Your friends in Magellan talking about a connection to Corpus. Is there a need to get more crude from Houston over toward St. James? |
The differentials will tell you yes. |
I'm trying to think of the additional projects that are in your likely future. |
The differentials -- LLS is about $8.00 and changes over WTI and East Houston's $6.00. So it's $2.00-2.50 differential so there's clearly demand in St. James. |
Some of that's grade dependent as well. There could be Canadian barrels looking for a home to get run in St. James. And for those, that would be the most efficient way to get there. So I think there are two components to the projects and we're excited about both of them. |
We'll go next to Shneur Gershuni with UBS. |
Good afternoon. How's it going, guys? Just a couple of questions here. I'll try not to keep it to 11 parts. In terms of the capital being invested for future growth, how much capital is being placed into service into 2019 that will only partially benefit '19 and roll into 2020 and how much of your current capex impacts... |
I don't want to get into talking about 2020 because there's a lot of road between now and then. I think the message you can take is we've keyed up a number of projects here that aren't currently sanctioned, particularly around the diamond and the cap line reversal. I think the takeaway should be, we've got a number of ... |
Fair enough. As kind of a follow-up there in sort of the other projects that you're considering. I believe at your analyst day you talked about a Wichita Falls extension that could sort of take you all the way to St. James as well as a bullet pipe -- potentially theoretically a Cactus III. Have those ideas -- are they ... |
Wichita Falls, we actually laid out two alternatives. One, to extend it to Cushing, alternatively to extend it east and connecting to the Red River system, which could then tie into Longview and energy transfers out of the pipeline, sets them from Longview into Baton Rouge. Those projects are still actively being advan... |
Just one more thing to add. There's a lot of talk of new lines going from A to B. One of the things -- our strategies is -- how do we take our existing system and come up with a hopefully shorter-term solution and certainly a more cost-effective solution. So for us, there may be more connecting the dots between existin... |
We'll go next to Christine Cho with Barclays. |
Hi, everyone. For the cap line reversal, is this gonna be from Patoka down or just from that extension in Memphis? How much time would you need to reverse it and do your connection? Like, if you were to do an agreement tomorrow with all the parties, how much time do you need to reverse and commercialize? Are we talking... |
It's an 18 to 24-month process. If we started today, probably close to 24 months. We have to purge the line, we need some equipment, we need a little bit of extension of the pipeline from Memphis to Collierville. So maybe the south end of the system could be reversed in an 18-month timeframe. North end, would be a litt... |
And when you say south, are you talking from Memphis still? |
And then when you say the north part is from Patoka all the way down? |
Correct. And the connecting carriers need some work too at Patoka so it's not all in our control. |
Okay. And then, the Permian long-haul pipes that you guys have, with them running full, how should we think about the risks to volumes in excess of the MBCs moving over to some of the NGL to crude pipeline conversions that have been announced for next year? Are there any protections or mechanisms in place to keep the v... |
The best way to think about it is, our guidance reflects our view on how lines do given all the relative projects that our forecast comes in service next year. |
And Christine, don't forget there are different kinds of commitments, right? So you've got minimum volume commitments, which you addressed. There's also acreage dedication, which would be dedicated to our system. And a lot of the contracts we've got as we've chatted before, are longer tenured so there's nothing that fa... |
We had some legacy systems that are just common carrier pipes, you can walk up and ship today or not ship today. Our guidance reflects our view on those volumes. |
We'll go next to Michael Blum with Wells Fargo. |
Hey, good evening, everybody. Just one question on cap line reversal. Rather than Patoka, would you be sourcing heavy barrels from Canada? So that part would sort of having to sync up with line three or could you also source barrels theoretically from the Bakken so those could be light suite barrels and come sooner? |
Well, it will be driven by a Canadian -- by assets Canadian barrels. That's why I had mentioned earlier that it is dependent on connecting carriers. And timeframe will probably be longer than a reversal in Memphis portion south. But it could conceivably receive volume from Bakken sources as well. |
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