Declarations

‘Unfunded’ mandate

“Here in New Hampshire, we pride ourselves on being frugal, and here in New Hampshire, we pride ourselves on respecting the privacy of our neighbors. We are not about to be coerced into an unfunded mandate, especially one we’d have to pay for with our privacy.”

— N.H. Gov. John Lynch upon signing a bill in which the state officially rejected the federal Real ID Act that requires all states to bring their driver’s licenses under a national standard and to link their record-keeping systems. South Carolina, Montana, Washington, Oklahoma and Maine also have rejected the federal act.

Praying in Pennsylvania

“We’re ready if it happens again but we’re praying it doesn’t.”

— Duane Smith, the owner of the Portland Market, who reopened his business a year after flooding heavily damaged the borough of Portland, Pa., on the Delaware River. Smith’s was the last of the downtown businesses reopened. His entire grocery store was gutted. Cleanup cost $400,000 in insurance money and some out of pocket.

Suit dismissed

“This case was giving American justice a black eye around the world, and it was all the more upsetting because it was a judge and lawyer who was bringing the suit.”

— Paul Rothstein, a Georgetown University law professor, hailing the rejection by a judge of a lawsuit that sought $54 million by taking a South Korean dry cleaner’s promise of “Satisfaction Guaranteed” to its most legalistic extreme. The plaintiff, Roy L. Pearson, himself an administrative judge, became a worldwide symbol of legal abuse by seeking jackpot justice from a simple complaint that a neighborhood dry cleaners in Washington, D.C. lost the pants from a suit and tried to give him a pair that were not his. But a judge decided that Pearson was not entitled to a penny, and in fact owes the owners of the dry cleaners $1,000 in clerical court costs.

Reform benefits

“We promised that we would reduce the cost of workers’ compensation as part of our effort to make New York more business friendly.”

— N.Y. Gov. Eliot Spitzer announcing that rates for workers’ compensation insurance in New York will decline by more than 20.5 percent — the biggest cut in more than 20 years that is estimated to save employers about $1 billion. Spitzer, joined by Assembly and Senate leaders, credited passage of reforms earlier this year for the drop.

Furlough

“While I regret that we were not able to reach this accord earlier, I am gratified that we have agreed in principle to a spending plan that will continue to move Pennsylvania forward.”

— Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell announcing a tentative state budget deal and an end to the furlough of state workers. Thousands of state employees including those in the insurance and motor vehicle departments were back on the job after a one-day shutdown. Rendell had ordered the furlough of some 25,000 state employees as a political deadlock delayed approval of the state budget more than a week into the new fiscal year.