CFCA Insider

"Sound Payments, headquartered in Jacksonville, FL, is a multi-channel, diversified technology company with innovators and experts in the Payments, Petroleum, and Financial Services Industries. Our company supports business growth worldwide by providing cutting-edge, simplified software and hardware solutions in multiple industries. 
 
Our company provides better, secure technology solutions that positively impact lives worldwide. Sound Payments’ team of experts deliver results, helping businesses grow and increase profits. They solve challenges that make doing business and life easier.
 
What Makes us Different…

 

Sound Payments team of experts focuses on providing a simplified approach and customized solutions in all channels. Our company offers only the best hardware and software solutions. Sound Payments emphasizes technical support and customer service while offering value-added, feature-rich products and services at a cost-effective price."

The South Coast Air Quality Management District is seeking information as they attempt to streamline existing mobile fueling rules and expand regulations to include on demand or app based fueling providers for gasoline. SCAQMD says they do not intend to make changes to diesel mobile fueling (aka wet-hosing) but CFCA is working to ensure separate definitions to prevent confusion.

 

If your company is engaged in mobile fueling of any kind, please fill out this survey. It will go a long way to show that CFCA members have been providing fleet fueling and wet-hosing services for years without incident.

 

CFCA needs this information to protect our industry against the SCAQMD's apparent favoritism towards mobile fueling providers, and to hold all fuel providers to the same standards.

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is embarking on a major effort to adopt new regulations that will impact all companies that operate heavy-duty vehicles in California. CARB’s already adopted and proposed regulations will:

 

·     Implement an aggressive Inspection and Maintenance (I/M) program that will apply to all heavy-duty vehicles that operate in California regardless of where they are based;

·     Require many companies to report to CARB details regarding the vehicles in their fleets as well as fleet operations;

·     Impose more emission standards that are more stringent that those set by U.S. EPA on new heavy-duty vehicles which could lead to higher prices and product unavailability in California;

·     Mandate that vehicle manufacturers sell specific numbers of zero-emission heavy-duty vehicles in California and force California fleet operators to purchase and operate zero-emission vehicles; and

·     Prohibit the sale and possibly the operation of non-zero emission vehicles in California. 

 

This webinar will summarize CARB’s announced regulatory plans and focus on the potential impacts to California based companies that operate heavy-duty vehicles as well as out-of-state companies that operate heavy-duty vehicles in California.

From the number of cars crossing San Francisco’s Bay Bridge to the traffic jams in Berlin and air pollution on the streets of Beijing, everything suggests that a recovery in global fuel demand is wobbling.

 

What the world’s not doing is heading back to the kind of historic collapse in consumption witnessed earlier this year, despite swaths of Europe returning to restrictive measures to combat the spread of Covid-19.

 

Those are the findings of high frequency data that suggest countries accounting for more than 70% of global petroleum consumption are faring a lot better this time around than during the previous lockdowns...

 

And in Brazil and Mexico, which together consume as much oil as India, traffic data also point to rising demand for transport fuels. “It seems like we may have turned the corner,” said James Allison, spokesman for California Fuels and Convenience Alliance, a trade group representing forecourts. “The general feeling is that people are more willing to make those day trips.”

A name familiar to clean-car advocates has reportedly made the shortlist to lead the Environmental Protection Agency for the incoming Biden administration.

 

Mary Nichols, currently head of the California Air Resources Board (CARB), was one of the names recommended to the Biden campaign for the EPA administrator post during the last stages of the election, Bloomberg reported in October—with renewed interest in recent days, given the reality of a President-elect.

 

Other candidates reportedly included environmental-justice advocate Heather McTeer Toney of Mississippi, National Wildlife Federation CEO Collin O'Mara, former Connecticut regulator Dan Esty, former Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire, and current Washington Governor Jay Inslee—who campaigned against Biden in the Democratic presidential primaries as the "climate candidate." 

After Gov. Gavin Newsom warned Monday that some of California’s counties would be falling back in his coronavirus reopening protocols, the state’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dr. Mark Ghaly, announced on Tuesday that nearly a dozen counties are being required to move back to more restrictive measures.

 

A total of 11 counties, including one of the state’s most populous, fell back in the governor’s tiering structure. Sacramento, Stanislaus and San Diego retreated to the most restrictive Purple tier. That means movie theaters in those counties — which had been allowed to reopen up to 100 people or 25%, whichever is less in the Red tier — must shutter indoor operations again.

Donald Trump clashed with California throughout his presidency like nowhere else in the country over everything from immigration to automobile efficiency. By a two-to-one margin, Californians backed his Democratic challenger Joe Biden for president.

 

So how might things be more golden for the Golden State with Biden in the White House?

 

Well for starters, California won’t be suing the administration so much. Under Attorney General Xavier Becerra, California filed more than 100 lawsuits against the Trump administration — from protecting “dreamer” immigrants to regulation of gun parts.

 

“Our priorities in California transcend a president or an election,” Becerra told the Bay Area News Group in a statement last week. “But, we much prefer a partner in Washington to advance our shared prosperity.”

Some of the official opposition for Proposition 15 are the Republican Party of California, California Fuels & Convenience Alliance, and the California Taxpayers Association.

 

The Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP published a statement in opposition: “There’s no guarantee that any of the new revenue will make it into the classroom. Even the California School Boards Association refuses to support it.”

 

A “yes” vote will support an amendment to the state’s constitution with everything listed above.

 

A “no” vote will reject changes to the state constitution and state tax rates. Commercial and industrial property tax rates would continue to be based on the property purchase price.