Home » Authors » Chris O'Malley

Chris O'Malley

Articles

State sipping on answers from Veolia Water utility: Regulators wonder if capital spending is adequate

About one-third of the 30 questions state regulators sent to Veolia Water Indianapolis in June relate to whether the operator of the city’s water system has designated enough money for capital improvements to meet demand and sustain water pressure during dry spells. “Please identify and provide the details for all capital improvement projects, system improvements and master plans, including proposed plans, for IW. When were those plans, if any, last revised?” read a typical question from the Indiana Utility Regulatory…

Read More

Trustee balks at creditor legal bill: ATA bankruptcy watchdog calls hours ‘unreasonable’

The bankruptcy court watchdog has sunk its teeth into the hind pockets of a New York law firm representing creditors in the ATA Holdings Corp. bankruptcy, howling that it billed more hours than even the airline’s own counsel. U.S. Trustee Nancy J. Gargula filed the objection July 27 in U.S. District Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Indiana, citing the “unnecessary and per se unreasonable” hours billed by Akin Gump Strauss Hower and Feld LLP between ATA’s Oct. 26…

Read More

Event targets greener vehicles: Fleet operators to discuss emission-reduction methods at downtown conference

More sparks have been flying from city garbage trucks lately than a City-County Council meeting over police and sheriff’s department consolidation. Mechanics have been cutting out sections of garbage truck exhaust pipes and splicing in tubes filled with precious metals. When the “diesel oxidation catalyst” heats up, combustion gases blowing through it are cleansed before coming out the tailpipe. So simple and quick is this approach to curbing air pollution that John Chavez hopes the humble trash truck project will…

Read More

Bias claimed at Citizens Gas: Black workers: Test limited advancement

Citizens Gas & Coke Utility is battling allegations that a test used to screen employees and outside job applicants was biased against blacks, hindering their chances of getting hired or advancing. The city-owned utility last year reached a confidential settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of applicants who weren’t hired because the test “has an adverse impact on black employees and applicants for promotion, transfers and hire,” according to EEOC documents. Now, that settlement-which included cash payouts…

Read More

Ex-IPL officer fights utility: Claims wrongful termination, financial trickery

Not even a lineman at Indianapolis Power & Light Co. has more nerve than Dwane Ingalls. Floored that IPL’s CEO, Ann Murtlow, didn’t share his concerns that IPL was sending excessive cash to parent AES Corp. at the expense of electric-service reliability, the IPL vice president scheduled a meeting in mid-2003 at the Maryland home of AES CEO Paul Hanrahan. Hanrahan apparently didn’t see things Ingalls’ way. Within a year of the meeting, Murtlow terminated the 14-year AES employee. Now,…

Read More

Making way for a MONSTER: Airport to dish out millions to accommodate Airbus A380

The 7,700 acres that are Indianapolis International Airport may soon look like the city squashed by Godzilla-when big, bad A380 comes to town. And it is likely to cost tens of millions of dollars to keep the beast happy. The A380 is the Airbus Industrie superjumbo jet. Airport managers want to start crunching-er, make that estimating-what it will cost to accommodate the world’s biggest airliner. They plan to ask the Indianapolis Airport Authority board for $200,000 from the 2006 airport…

Read More

Auto auction board hikes own pay: Adesa Inc. also sent executive packing with full-sized severance

Vehicle auction giant Adesa Inc., which already pays one of the richest sums to its directors of any local company, has jacked up its annual board retainer 50 percent. Meanwhile, the Carmel-based company also has disclosed details of a severance package it paid to Executive Vice President James P. Hallett worth more than $1.3 million, not including the value of his stock options. Both events were disclosed in documents filed recently with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The eight-person board…

Read More

AAR lands another maintenance customer at base: Work for ATA Airlines raises questions about future of carrier’s own maintenance hangar as fleet shrinks

ATA Airlines Inc. has tapped aircraft repair firm AAR Corp. to refurbish up to 14 older Boeing 737s joining its fleet rather than using its own maintenance operation barely a mile away. The Indianapolis-based airline also is considering a plan to abandon its maintenance facility for a smaller location at Indianapolis International Airport, according to a source involved in the leasing discussions. The bankrupt carrier indicated in a court hearing last week that it would not reject its current maintenance…

Read More

Incentives take aim at rising fuel costs: State pumps out grants for company vehicles using alternative fuels

A combination of soaring gasoline prices, state grants and environmental idealism have whet appetites among businesses for “alternative fuel vehicles” such as this batterypowered Global Electric Motorcars model. A $3,996 grant from the Lieutenant Governor’s Office paid for about one-third the cost of the Pizza Express vehicle, manufactured by a DaimlerChrysler subsidiary. “Industries such as ours should be pioneers in the electric vehicle frontier,” said Gabe Connell, franchisee of the Pizza Express restaurants near IUPUI and in Broad Ripple. As…

Read More

Travel firm says aloha to ATA deal: Hawaii pact with Southwest may ease loss of business from Pleasant Holidays

ATA Airlines Inc., plotting a new business plan that includes “maintaining and possibly expanding scheduled service to Hawaii,” has lost a key contract that had bolstered its lucrative lift to the Aloha State. The end of the agreement with the travel service Pleasant Holidays, starting in January, will be eased partly by a new code-sharing deal the Indianapolis carrier reached with Southwest Airlines last month, according to the increasingly Southwest-dependent ATA. West Lake, Calif.-based Pleasant Holidays pre-purchases tickets on ATA….

Read More

AES stock on slow return: But share price of IPALCO’s parent company still off 75 percent from electrifying peak

A volatile utility stock that shorted retirement savings and generated lawsuits against former IPALCO Enterprises insiders is lighting up on Wall Street. AES Corp. shares have risen 60 percent over the last year. Analysts point to debt reduction and moves to rein in what some viewed as an absurdly decentralized management structure at the Arlington, Va.-based energy giant with operations in 27 countries. Even with the stock and analyst projections looking brighter, AES shares remain a pariah to many local…

Read More

ATA captain bids bon voyage to Orion: Mikelsons unloads $4.95 million luxury vessel as company’s struggles take toll on his assets

ATA Holdings Corp. Chairman J. George Mikelsons has sold his $4.95 million yacht and has been handed a regal bill for its crew’s pay and benefits-the latest blow to the fortunes of the bankrupt airline’s founder. “When pilots get together, one of the things that always comes up is, ‘Why does George still have his boats?’ People still complain,” said Rusty Ayers of the Air Line Pilots Association, in Chicago. “We used to joke that if they ever got furloughed,…

Read More

‘Clean’ manufacturing center seeking cash to survive: General Assembly kills funding for Purdue program

The center created by the Legislature to help manufacturers use environmentally friendly materials and production methods is scrambling for cash to keep stamping out solutions. The Indiana Clean Manufacturing Technology & Safe Materials Institute lost its $475,000 annual state subsidy-a little over half its income-amid budget cutting in the last session of the General Assembly. Industry and environmental groups are lamenting the potential scale-back or even closure of the institute if new funding isn’t found by August. “We certainly feel…

Read More

Cab drivers drive down complaints: Service may have improved after city toughened rules

But much of the evidence is anecdotal, as city officials said they do not have complete complaint records for the periods just before and after the City-County Council imposed tougher regulations in 2002. One key problem addressed by those reforms seems to have diminished-drivers taking passengers to the wrong address. The city received only two such complaints in the last 1-1/2 years, according to records kept by the City Controller’s Office. That had been a commonly reported problem in the…

Read More

Airport seeking more air cargo operations: Carriers that fly to Asia among hot prospects beyond FedEx at nation’s 7th-largest cargo airport

When all exports are considered, by air and sea, China is Indiana’s eighthlargest destination, growing 25 percent last year to $294.4 million, according to the Center for International Business Education and Research at Indiana University. Air cargo to China is 10 times greater than a decade ago, Michael Ducker, an executive vice president of FedEx, said in a presentation about China. Airport officials won’t say whom they’ve courted in the cargo realm. “We’re casting a pretty broad net,” said BAA…

Read More

Watchdogs wishing for tough IURC: Consumer, biz groups hope Daniels picks commissioner who’ll say ‘no’ to utilities

Industrial and consumer interests say Gov. Mitch Daniels needs to fill a pending vacancy at the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission with a regulator “able to say no” to utility companies. The IURC has too often allowed utilities to pass on increased costs for fuel or purchased power, for example, through so-called tracking mechanisms rather than through traditional rate cases that take into consideration offsetting reductions in other costs, they complain. “It’s important to be able to say no to the…

Read More

City to land more aircraft mechanics: Lease calls for Republic to add 186 jobs

Republic Airways Holdings plans to add nearly 200 aircraft maintenance jobs at Indianapolis International Airport, based on employment projections in a lease the carrier recently signed for a new hangar. The Indianapolis-based regional carrier that employs 114 mechanics here “agrees to use commercially reasonable efforts to achieve average employment of 300 full-time Indiana resident employees at the facility … at an average salary of $18 per hour during the first year,” states a lease signed April 15 with the Indianapolis…

Read More

Employers, workers dip toes in vanpool concept: Commuter service pushes cost savings, tax breaks to lure first riders

Six months after launching a carpooling and bus-riding effort, Central Indiana Commuter Services is still trying to convince the city’s car-cozy commuters to get aboard its vanpooling program. The first CICS van has yet to roll people to and from work, even as 553 people have begun to carpool and 1,251 others wait to be matched with other carpoolers. Instead, the vans have been motoring to office parks as part of a road show to win over employers and workers….

Read More

Cable operator to battle Ma Bell for downtown customers: Bright House to roll out telephone biz late this year

Bright House Networks plans a fourthquarter launch of residential phone service via its cable television system, bringing new competition to entrenched SBC Communications and to local exchange resellers in the heart of the city. That area includes the downtown business district, where Bright House already provides cable TV and high-speed Internet. Phone service tailored for commercial use “is probably a year out,” said Doug Murray, general manager of voice services in Indianapolis for the St. Petersburg-based company. Such a product…

Read More

State targets salvage yards: 44 violations cited, but no fines so far

Indiana auto salvage yards are finding themselves in the crusher-in the clutch of regulatory jaws bent on reducing salvage-yard pollutants. In barely two years, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management has issued violation notices to 44 salvage yards, according to state records. While historical numbers weren’t immediately available, “before, we were sporadic and really didn’t have a widespread effort,” said Amy Hartsock, an IDEM spokeswoman. While on the prowl lately, the agency’s jaws have been padded with rich Corinthian leather:…

Read More