Ron Beal, president and CEO of Memphis, Tenn.-based Orgill, presented his views on hardware distribution during the President's Council meeting in Las Vegas. Here are the highlights.

"I've been at this a long time. One of the things that always impressed me is how simple distribution is to conceptualize, but how complex and how difficult it can be to actually execute. … It's pretty easy to understand why companies are not exactly standing in line to get in the business of distributing hardware products."

Houston-based hardlines co-op Handy Hardware Wholesale submitted papers for their much-anticipated plan of reorganization March 6.

The 1,300-member regional co-op filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January. Whether Handy can return to its place as a meaningful and profitable player in the hardware business remains to be seen. This much is certain: What was once $27 million in member equity in Class A and Class B shares has vanished.

The National Lumber and Building Material Dealers Association (NLBMDA) has released its national legislative and regulatory policy agenda for 2013, which will serve as a guideline for meetings with members of Congress and key administration officials on March 18 to 20.

Des Plaines, Ill.-based National Association of the Remodeling Industry (NARI) released a post-Hurricane Sandy report from its 12 chapters affected by the northeastern storm.

“Those affected by the storm are now trying to piece lives back together,” says NARI National Chairman Michael Hydeck, president of Hydeck Design Build, in Telford, Pa. “The NARI community is proud to come together and support each other in what will be a long and difficult rebuilding process.”

Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) compliance is difficult and annoying, said Mark Oberti, an attorney with Oberti Sullivan LLP in Houston, at the National Employment Law Institute’s Annual Employment Law Conference in Arlington, Va., Nov. 16, 2012.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s FMLA regulations often aren’t much help, as they rarely make it clear when an employer may fire someone, he added.

Oberti outlined 12 compliance strategies for employers:

E-Verify has found a champion in presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who would make the federal electronic employee verification system mandatory nationwide so that U.S. employment would become less of a magnet for illegal immigration.

But while E-Verify has become less error-ridden and more popular among employers than it used to be, it remains easy to fool, costly and widely ignored in states where it is required, according to a Sept. 25, 2012, report.

Hodgepodge of state laws