Six minutes of news from around the nation.

'It's like an inferno.' Pacific Palisades fire explodes as thousands flee; Banks, lenders to no longer consider medical debt under new rules; CT educators celebrate passage of Social Security Fairness Act; and US Labor Department wants MD workers to claim their wages.

Transcript

The Public News Service Daily Newscast, January the 8th, 2025.

I'm Mike Clifford.

Fires have ignited in the Los Angeles area amid dangerous dry offshore winds that can quickly spread flames.

That's from the LA Times.

They report one of the Pacific Palisades has grown to more than 700 acres and forced evacuations.

Electricity providers have started initiating planned power shutoffs to limit further fires.

The Times reports a fire was burning out of control Tuesday in Pacific Palisades, destroying homes and forcing residents to abandon their vehicles and flee amid a potentially life-threatening and destructive windstorm.

Next to Connecticut, where educators and other public sector workers are celebrating passage of the Social Security Fairness Act.

Connecticut Education Association says passing this law rights a 40-year-old wrong.

The government chose erroneously to penalize public service employees to try and balance Social Security, and it was never a just cause.

So it's great to see this overturned.

Money returned to people who have rightfully earned it.

Supporters of the change say the biggest challenge to passing the law was that many people were unaware of these limits for public employees.

Some critics charge this could speed up the timeline for Social Security's insolvency, but DS feels there's more work to do, including higher teacher salaries to reflect the education required to do the work.

Reports show most Connecticut salaries don't keep up with the cost of living.

I'm Edwin J. Vieira.

And South Dakota is among the states with the highest percentage of residents carrying medical debt.

A new federal rule announced this week could ease some of the pressure when they apply for loans.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has finalized a rule that says credit agencies can't share a person's medical debt history with a lending institution requesting credit information.

The only debt details that can be relayed to determine a person's creditworthiness are mortgages, car loans, credit cards, and similar activity.

Patricia Calamara of the Public Interest Research Group says organizations like hers have long pushed for this move.

Medical debt is not really indicative of somebody's ability or desire to pay back a loan.

Oftentimes people are in a situation where they get a bad medical diagnosis or they've been in a car accident.

Suddenly they have a lot of medical bills.

According to the Peterson KFF Health System Tracker, nearly 18 percent of South Dakota adults report having medical debt.

The national average is 8 percent.

Some credit agencies already exclude medical debt in loan situations.

Calamara acknowledges the incoming Trump administration could seek to reverse this rule change as some advisors have said they want to do away with the CFPB altogether.

Pushback also is expected from debt collection firms.

But Calamara says skeptics should know that keeping medical debt out of the equation is good for the overall economy.

I'm Mike Mudd reporting.

This is Public News Service.

The U.S. Department of Labor is holding $6.8 million in unpaid wages for more than 5,000 Maryland workers and says time is running out to claim those wages.

The Labor Department enforces the Fair Labor Standards Act, which includes regulations for minimum wage, overtime pay, record keeping, and youth employment.

A new study labels Maryland the worst state for wage theft, with more than $2,200 of back wages per employee.

Nick Fiorello with the Labor Department says the agency may investigate a complaint from a worker or third party.

But the department also looks into specific industries that are common wage theft culprits.

We also focus on certain priority industries, low-wage industries, construction industry, residential home care industry, restaurants, food service industry, landscaping.

Sometimes we're just initiating investigations out of one of those priorities.

It has nothing to do with a complaint.

Workers can see if they are owed unpaid wages by going to the Department of Labor's database, called Workers' Owed Wages.

There, workers can look for their employer and their own name to see if they are owed unpaid wages.

I'm Zimone Perez.

And some University of Nebraska students are gaining career skills as they work to address the state's affordable housing shortage by making small, practical dwellings available in some of Omaha's most distressed areas.

The price of a new home in the U.S. has jumped from about $140,000 to more than $340,000 in the last two decades, making affordable homes harder to come by and leaving more people without a place to live.

University of Nebraska architecture professor Jeffrey Day says the city needs 30,000 additional housing units just to keep up with demand, and 60 percent have to qualify as affordable.

But the other challenge in Omaha is that 80 percent of the city's residentially zoned land does not allow multifamily or even small multifamily housing.

It's really all zoned for single-family dwellings, which makes it very hard to increase density in the city in order to produce more units.

I'm Mark Moran.

Finally, Mainers who need coverage through the state's online health insurance marketplace have just one week left to apply.

The deadline is January 15th to sign up for coverage starting February 1st.

Rachel Colomore with Augusta-based Consumers for Affordable Health Care says those who lack access to health or dental insurance through their employer, Medicare, or MaineCare can compare plans at CoverMe.gov.

No system is perfect, so if you wait until the last minute, if there's an error, that can be really scary.

Find someone who might be able to help you navigate the process.

Colomore says CoverMe.gov has a support tab, which shows the Maine enrollment assisters and other brokers available statewide.

I'm Catherine Carley.

This is Mike Clifford for Public News Service, member and listener supported.

Hear us on interesting radio stations, your favorite podcast platform.

Find our content and trust indicators at publicnewsservice.org.