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A federal judge has ruled that Xcel Energy Inc. must give federal regulators plans for capital projects at two of its Minnesota power plants.

The order, issued Monday, also denied a request by the Minneapolis-based utility to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the Environmental Protection Agency to obtain the information.

The EPA filed the lawsuit in June, alleging that Xcel has denied requests for information on planned construction projects at the Sherburne County (Sherco) plant in Becker and the Black Dog plant in Burnsville.

Both plants are owned and operated by Xcel (NYSE: XEL) subsidiary Northern States Power Co.

Xcel said the requests were burdensome, unreasonable and exceeded the EPA's authority, but U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson said that did not appear to be the case.

Magnuson's order gives Xcel 30 days to turn over all documents related to capital projects at the plants that were either under construction when the EPA made its first request in July 2009 or are planned to begin within two years no fax needed payday loans.

"EPA is justified in asking for two years’ worth of construction plans on Sherco and Black Dog because … such a demand would afford the agency adequate time in which to analyze the potential emissions impact of a given project.," Magnuson wrote.

The Department of Justice said Xcel faces civil fines of up to $37,500 per day for each violation.

The Sherco plant has three coal-fired electric generating units between 750 and 900 megawatts.The Black Dog plant has two coal units, at 120 and 186 megawatts. Both plants are classified as "major emitting facilities" because they release thousands of tons or air pollutants every year, according to the suit.

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State Treasurer Ted Wheeler has recommended a temporary halt to Oregon General Fund-backed public borrowing. Wheeler made the recommendation Thursday during a special meeting he convened of the State Debt Policy Advisory Commission, which he chairs.

The commission unanimously endorsed the temporary halt based on the shrunken pool of General Fund dollars available to repay any debt incurred. The measure is not binding but will be included in Wheeler's report to the state Legislature when it convenes in January.

“We have a responsibility to Oregon taxpayers to protect the state’s strong credit rating and to avoid the mistakes of other state governments that have tried to borrow their way out of deficits,” said Wheeler, in a statement. The state currently has a AA credit rating from Standard & Poor's, a Aa1 credit rating from Moody's Investors Service, and a AA+ rating from Fitch’s Investors Service.

In making his case, Wheeler noted that the state is currently paying $70 million to service $431 million in debt approved by the 2003 Oregon Legislature to cover operating expenses. That debt will be retired in 2013.

The commission also agreed to ask the Department of Administrative Services to reconsider the timing of certain new bond-financed projects that have already been authorized but for which bonds have not yet been sold.

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Anthera Pharmaceuticals, which raised $42 million in its March IPO, plans to raise $31.5 million in a private placement.

The Hayward company (NASDAQ: ANTH) will sell 10.5 million “units” in this deal. Each unit is one share of stock and a warrant to buy 0.40 of a share at a price of $3.30 per share.

The deal should close on Sept. 24. Anthera will spend the money on Phase IIb testing of its drug A-623 in patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.

Anthera lowered the price of its initial public offering several times this spring before raising the $42 million in March.

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Overland Park-based insurance company Alternative Risk Services LLC is heading across the state line, a move that Kansas City economic development officials welcome after several high-profile companies recently exited the urban core.

Russell Jones, managing director of ARS, touted the relocation at the Economic Development Corp. of Kansas City’s annual board meeting Friday morning.

“We are juxtapositioning a Kansas company to Kansas City, Missouri,” Jones said. “The centrality, the work ethic north of the river, those factors played into the move.”

In July, Hoefer Wysocki Architects LLC announced that it was taking its 67 jobs from its location on the Country Club Plaza to Leawood. In August, KeyBank Real Estate Capital relocated 300 jobs from Kansas City to the Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) headquarters campus in Overland Park.

ARS will move about 50 employees to a 13,000-square-foot office at 10525 N.W. Ambassador Drive in December. Jones said the company expects to create 16 new positions with an average salary of $57,000. The project represents about $825,000 in investment during the next five years.

Recently acquired by Cowell Insurance Group, ARS specializes in workers’ compensation insurance for group self-insured companies such as the Missouri Restaurant Association and the Kansas Trucking Association online payday loan lenders.

The EDC assisted the Missouri Department of Economic Development in the deal, helping secure about $242,000 in Enhanced Enterprise Zone tax and investment tax credits. The department sweetened the pot with an additional potential $72,000 in tax savings if ARS creates 60 jobs in the first five years.

Mike Kirchhoff, EDC vice president for retention and recruitment, said relocations from Kansas to Missouri happen more frequently than are reported. There is an informal agreeement among economic development agencies throughout the metro area to refrain from actively recruiting across the state line, Kirchhoff said, but companies can’t ignore state tax incentives for new job creation as the recession lingers.

“Companies are looking every day to do what they can to maximize return on investment and cut costs,” he said. “Prudently they look around and see where they can best do that.”

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Managing financial data is often a nightmare for small business owners. Most can’t afford pricey accountants, and few have the bookkeeping and organizational skills to do the job well themselves.

Enter InDinero, a startup taking aim at that problem.

The site, which founder Jessica Mah calls "the Mint.com for small businesses," offers business owners a dashboard for real-time financial tracking, modeling and forecasting. A snazzy visual interface helps hammer home the meaning of the numbers — like a "cash runway" gauge that shows how many months of financial fuel a company has in its tank.

A recent grad of venture firm Y Combinator, InDinero launched two months ago to glowing reviews and recently closed a $1 million financing round. The site has already attracted 4,000 business clients using the system to track $400 million — and Mah says it’s already profitable.

"More than three-quarters of our customers never used any accounting before," Mah said. "We expected other programs to be our biggest hurdle — instead, it’s combating inertia."

Mah is painfully familiar with the problem she is trying to solve. She launched her first business when she was 13 years old, and continued in the entrepreneurial vein throughout high school. Whether she was selling website templates on eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500) or running a server hosting site, the financial details were always a headache.

"I was generating a lot of revenue, but my margins weren’t good," Mah said. "Even though I knew that, I couldn’t figure out a way to solve my problems."

Mah tried to use accounting programs like Intuit’s (INTU) QuickBooks, but found them time-consuming and lacking details.

"I wanted to see, for example, how long my company could survive if my revenue dried up overnight," Mah said.

InDinero can show you that. Mah and her business partner, Andy Su, met in college at the University of California’s Berkeley campus. They started chatting about their problems with business accounting software, and expanded the discussion to other classmates who’d tried to launch companies.

The stories were the same: Entrepreneurs didn’t want to spend a lot of time on complicated software or daunting math fast cash. They wanted a quick way to see their finances at a glance. Mah and Su compiled the ideas and began building InDinero in March 2009.

"Twitter and Facebook are fun, but they don’t fix business problems," Mah said. "We wanted to create solutions."

Mah met with more than 50 accountants and business owners for tips, but the results weren’t encouraging.

"A lot of investors told us it would be really difficult because businesses want so many things," Mah said. "And it’s a finance application, which doesn’t sound very sexy."

The original plan was to create accounting software, but Mah and Su decided to instead create what they call "a real-time financial dashboard." They focused on the user interface, opting to start with clean graphics and worry about the gritty math details later.

Mah, a computer science graduate, said she built the site around "the idea of what the perfect bank will look like in the year 2100." Setup takes less than 3 minutes, and InDinero pulls in past transactions from businesses’ debit, credit and checking accounts.

The site displays graphs detailing how much is business is making, as well as how much it’s spending across categories like payroll and travel. Users can also see forecasts for their next 18 months, including the impact of events like hiring a new employee or increasig their Web server costs.

But unlike Mint.com, which relies on advertising to make money, InDinero isn’t completely free. Basic accounts come gratis, but businesses with more than 50 transactions a month will need to shell out $30 a month. An enterprise account, for companies with more than 500 monthly transactions, costs $100 a month.

InDinero is currently run by a five-person team — and they all live together in a Mountain View apartment. Mah hasn’t yet paid herself a salary.

She says she’d rather use profits to hire new employees. After all, she’s taken to heart the lesson her software illustrates: "Managing money is hugely important for small businesses."  

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Yolo Federal Credit Union is reporting it has grant funds available for lower income homebuyers within Yolo County.

The Workforce Inniative for Supportive Housing program grants can be for up to $15,000 for down-payment and closing costs associated with a home purchase.

Under the WISH program, Yolo Federal will match up to $3 for every dollar contributed by the buyer toward a home.

“Providing low- and moderate-income individuals and families the chance at realizing their dream of homeownership is a high priority for us,” said Clyde Brooker, chief executive of the credit union, in a prepared release guaranteed personal loan approval. “This grant program is an important tool in helping us meet this objective.”

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President Barack Obama proposed spending $50 billion on infrastructure projects nationwide in an effort to spur job creation during a Labor Day speech at a union event in Milwaukee.

The six-year program would include rebuilding 150,000 miles of roads, 150 miles of airport runways and either building or refurbishing 4,000 miles of railroad, Obama said. The infrastructure plan would not increase the national deficit, he said.

"This will not only create jobs immediately," Obama said, "it’s also going to make our economy hum over the long haul."

The infrastructure plan also includes changing the federal system for allocating money to projects. The new "infrastructure bank" would make projects compete for federal money according to a system that would judge construction projects based upon the benefits each provides. The bank would replace earmarks or grants awarded to states and local governments according to a formula based upon geographic areas.

In Colorado, infrastructure contractors have been among the biggest fans of the federal economic-stimulus program, Cathy Proctor reports in the Denver Business Journal's Sept. 3-9 edition. Many local transportation-industry figures say that federal dollars funneled to the state Department of Transportation to build and maintain roads and bridges have helped to keep their companies afloat through the recession. (Subscribers can access Proctor's report here.)

Even so, the federal Recovery Act has been blasted by many Colorado Republicans in their fall election campaigns as wasteful and largely ineffective while boosting the federal deficit.

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The Missouri Gaming Commission said it received five applications for Missouri’s 13th and last-available gaming license by the Wednesday deadline.

The five applicants are:

• Casino Celebration LLC, proposing a facility for St. Louis.

• North County Development LLC, proposing a casino in Spanish Lake.

• Isle of Capri-Cape Girardeau LLC, part of St. Louis-based gaming company Isle of Capri Casinos Inc. (Nasdaq: ISLE), proposing a $125 million casino in Cape Girardeau.

• Sunway Gaming LLC, which proposes a casino in Sugar Creek outside Kansas City.

• Epic Gaming LLC, which also proposes a casino in Sugar Creek.

The commission said no other details are yet available until public disclosure forms are compiled, possibly within the next week.

Seven groups, including the five above, submitted pre-application investment and economic analysis data by a July 15 deadline. The Missouri Department of Economic Development will use the information to help gaming regulators pick a winner. The list of interested parties has narrowed since May, when 15 groups submitted letters of interest.

This is the first time the commission has conducted such a process since voters capped the number of gaming licenses in 2008.

The state’s last gaming license opened up in June when Las Vegas-based Pinnacle Entertainment (NYSE: PNK) closed the President Casino on the Mississippi River at the foot of Laclede’s Landing in downtown St. Louis. Pinnacle also operates the Lumiere Place and River City casinos in St. Louis.

In July, a federal judge denied Pinnacle’s attempt to block St. Louis from trying to land the gaming license and open another casino.

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Home improvement is one of the fastest-growing segments of e-commerce. But the consequences of a bad decision when it comes to finding a contractor or remodeling products online are far worse than buying the wrong paperback.

What if those rave reviews you read about a contractor are ringers posted by his daughter — or if your supposedly in-stock sink order doesn’t ship for two weeks, throwing off your entire work schedule?

Follow these tips to avoid glitches and get the most for your money.

To find a contractor: Sites that are driven by consumer ratings are your best bet. That’s because you get to see what as many as hundreds of prior customers say about all the pros in your area.

Just watch for sites with anonymous postings and ads that appear in search results that look like positive ratings. In the New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles metro areas, or a few counties in New York, Connecticut, and Florida, check out Franklin-Report.com, which compiles user comments into Zagat-like ratings.

Beyond those regions, a good alternative is Angieslist.com, which charges $5 a month, and uses the credit card info to prevent anyone from creating more than one login in order to post multiple revews.

To vet a contractor: The next step is to talk to former clients and visit current and completed job sites. Sadly, there are no e-ternatives to doing this in person.

But there is one key step you can do online: a background check high quality business cards. Get a report about a contractor’s licensing, bonding, insurance, bankruptcy, civil judgments, criminal background, liens, and credit rating for $13 at contractorcheck.com, run by the credit bureau Experian.

To order supplies

Sites run by home-improvement chains (such as HomeDepot.com and Lowes.com), boutique manufacturers (BeadBoard.com, Horizon-Shutters.com), and specialty e-tailers (eFaucets.com, TileShop.com) offer bigger selections than local retailers do. But the main attraction is price: Discounts of 10% to 50% aren’t uncommon.

Just keep in mind that if something goes wrong, those savings could turn into cost overruns. As with any online purchase, you run the risk of shipping damage or late deliveries, which can derail a project with multiple tradesmen working around one another’s schedules.

So order online only if your contractor okays it and provides technical specs; you’re far enough ahead of the installation date to make other arrangements if there’s a problem; the site is an authorized dealer for the brands you’re buying; and if possible, you’ve seen the product firsthand.

Otherwise, buy locally. It’ll be easier to get matching items quickly if needed, and you’ll avoid having to deal with a faraway call center if a problem arises.  

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