Ratings agencies unfazed as county pension costs rise
Despite dire warnings that future pension costs could cause a fiscal meltdown for tri-county governments, credit ratings for Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo county bonds remain mostly unaffected by looming gaps in their retirement obligation funding.
Standard & Poor’s, a leading rating agency, ranks all three counties near the top of a scale that spans from its highest AAA to C, the lowest rating a bond can have without defaulting. Santa Barbara County carries the agency’s second highest AA-plus designation. Ventura County is assigned a slightly lower AA-rating this year and SLO County is ranked AA-minus.
Montecito investor gets sentencing date as ex-wife seeks bankruptcy
David Prenatt, the Montecito real estate investor who took in $18 million from more than a dozen people and then used the cash to support what a bankruptcy trustee called “lavish spending habits,” is headed for a sentencing in federal criminal court on Dec. 9.
Prenatt struck a deal with federal prosecutors this summer and pleaded guilty to giving false loan application information to Lompoc-based CoastHills Federal Credit Union. Prenatt’s creditors forced him into an involuntary bankruptcy proceeding in 2009. Earlier this fall, his former wife Maria Prenatt filed for personal bankruptcy claiming $27.1 million in debts.
Gov. Brown vetoes Amgen-backed anti-biosimilars bill
Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill supported by Thousand Oaks-based Amgen and other biotechnology companies that would have made it more difficult for pharmacists to dispense so-called biosimilars, the biotech industry’s analogue to generic pharmaceuticals.
Senate Bill 598, approved by both houses of the legislature, looked mostly like a procedural change to state’s pharmacy laws. If it passed, the bill would have allowed pharmacists to fill prescriptions with biosimilars that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration deems “interchangeable” with brand-name counterparts.
RingRevenue dials up new software focus
RingRevenue, the region’s fastest-growing company last year, has rebranded itself with a focus on its marketing software for corporate customers and added an executive from Salesforce.com’s acquisition team to its board of directors.
The Santa Barbara company’s new name will be Invoca. The firm makes a software platform that lets marketers insert unique telephone numbers into campaigns and then filter, track and give credit for incoming calls.
New water fees could dry up Ventura projects
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