Former U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan is joining a law and lobbying firm in Washington, D.C.

Dickstein Shapiro LLP announced Tuesday that the Holland Republican has been hired as a senior adviser.

Hoekstra plans to offer legislative and regulatory counseling in the areas of national security, defense, foreign relations, intelligence and international business, as well education and labor.

He skipped a 2010 re-election bid for his 2nd District congressional seat in west Michigan so he could run for governor, but lost to fellow Republican Rick Snyder.

During his 18 years in Congress, Hoekstra was the top-ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee and served as chairman some years.

At Dickstein Shapiro, the 57-year-old will be working with former House Speaker Dennis Hastert and former Arkansas Sen. Tim Hutchinson.

Trenton's city attorney has found pay-to-play problems with a $50,000 contract that the city recently awarded to an Atlantic City law firm with ties to Mayor Tony Mack.

Acting Law Director Marc McKithen voided the contract because he says Cooper Levenson gave money to a political action committee that supported Mack.

The Times of Trenton reported the firm gave $7,200 to the Partners for Progress PAC in June, three days before the PAC gave $7,200 to Mack's election fund.

Under the city's campaign finance laws, anyone who receives a city contract cannot give more than $500 to local PACs up to one year before they begin bidding.

Cooper Levenson says it didn't break the law but asked for the return of the contribution out of caution.

Most insurers, hospital executives and state officials expect they'll keep carrying out President Barack Obama's health care overhaul even after a federal judge cast its fate in doubt by declaring all of it unconstitutional.

"It's still the law of the land," said William Hoagland, vice president for public policy at health insurer Cigna. "We'll continue to proceed with its requirements, and (the ruling) will not slow that down. We have no other choice until this thing is resolved one way or the other." Insurers spent millions to block passage of the law.

Health care accounts for about one-sixth of the economy, and many players in the sprawling sector have a love-hate relationship with Obama's health care remake. There's dissatisfaction with key provisions, and a sense that parts may be unworkable. But at the same time, it's seen as a vehicle to start addressing problems of cost and quality that, left to fester, could trigger more drastic consequences.

"I don't think people are going to hit the stop button," said Paul Keckley, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, a research arm of the consulting firm. "You probably don't make the big bets right now, but you make the incremental investments in case you have to make the big bets 6 or 12 or 18 months down the road. Everyone proceeds with an informed approach."

Monday's ruling by U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson in Florida had been expected to go against the Obama administration. But the scope of the decision in a lawsuit by 26 of the 50 states took some by surprise.

Vinson struck down the entire law after finding its requirement for nearly all Americans to carry health insurance unconstitutional. Another judge who reached the same conclusion in a separate case voided the individual insurance requirement and left everything else in place.

A former business owner has pleaded guilty to scamming the Virginia Unemployment Compensation Program to pay his employees.

Timothy Lynn Skinner pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in Roanoke to theft of public money.

U.S. Attorney Timothy J. Heaphy says the 45-year-old resident submitted reports to the unemployment program falsely stating that his business, Tim's Machine Shop, had laid off employees.

The employees received about $30,000 in unemployment benefits while still working for Skinner's business. Skinner paid the workers the remainder of their regular wages in cash.

Heaphy says Skinner's business saw significant savings as a result of the scam.

Skinner faces up to 10 years in prison.

A state appeals court says San Francisco cannot be held responsible for the deaths of a father and two sons allegedly killed by a man who had been protected by the city's sanctuary policy.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the court ruled Monday that the city isn't liable for crimes committed by the alleged gunman, Edwin Ramos, who is a suspected illegal immigrant from El Salvador. The decision upholds a February 2010 court decision.

Police believe Ramos mistook Tony Bologna and his sons, Michael and Matthew, for gang members and then fatally shot them near their San Francisco home in June 2008.

Relatives say the victims might be alive if Ramos had been turned over to immigration authorities after earlier arrests when he was a juvenile.

BP's compensation fund for Gulf oil spill victims has issued a final settlement payment to just one of the thousands of people and businesses waiting for checks, records show, and that $10 million payout went to a company after the oil giant intervened on its behalf.

BP won't identify the business, citing confidentiality, but acknowledges it lobbied for the settlement. The amount far exceeds smaller stopgap payments that some individuals and businesses have received while they wait for their own final settlements.

The Gulf Coast Claims Facility was set up in August to independently administer BP's $20 billion compensation fund in the aftermath of its April 20 oil well blowout off Louisiana.

As of this weekend, roughly 91,000 people and businesses had filed for final settlements, but the fund's administrator, Washington lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, has said those checks won't start rolling out until February at the earliest. Thousands of people have received some money to tide them over until a final settlement amount is offered, but only one business listed as paid on the facility's website has so far received a check.

A BP spokeswoman called it "a unique situation in which an existing BP business partner and BP submitted a view on a specific claim" to the facility.