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HAMILTON COUNTY Carmel adopts budget of $89 million for services The city of Carmel has passed an $89 million budget for 2009. At its Oct. 6 meeting, the Carmel Common Council adopted the budget, which is based on a property tax rate that’s lower than the rate Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard, a Republican, inherited when […]
HANCOCK COUNTY RV dealer goes big league Things aren’t all bad for Indiana’s economic bellwether, known as the recreational vehicle industry. Found among the negative news, such as headlines in RV Business about Middlebury camper maker Pilgrim International’s going bankrupt and a big bank getting out of RV inventory financing, there was word that Mount […]
Indiana has become the lone state in the upper Midwest not requiring that utilities supply a certain percentage of their electricity from renewable resources, such as wind turbines and landfill gas. Last month, Michigan’s legislature mandated that at least 10 percent of electricity supplied in that state be generated from renewable sources by 2015. Indiana’s conspicuous lack of a standard, along with growing environmental concerns over coal, could improve prospects for passing a standard during the 2009 session of the…
Medicare’s new rule to refuse to pay hospitals for “preventable errors” hasn’t caused hospital administrators to lose sleep about lost revenue. But they do worry that the new rule, which went into effect Oct. 1, could increase the number of costly malpractice lawsuits filed against their hospitals. It’s not clear yet what the financial impact of Medicare’s new “no-pay” rule will be. But companies that make their money supplying hospitals with equipment and services have wasted no time using the…
After a tumultuous and historic couple of weeks, culminating Oct. 10-when stocks dropped 800 points as the market opened-investors stood on the edge of the abyss and stopped selling. Market participants arrived at the conclusion that, over that coming weekend, financial chiefs around the world would do whatever it took to rescue the financial system. And they did, by formulating measures to be undertaken by finance leaders across the globe that are unprecedented and wideranging, from supporting the commercial paper…
I was uncomfortably challenged when Faye of the Forest landed on my deck a few days ago wanting to know what all these economic goings-on meant. “I’m responsible for teaching the elves,” she said, “and I don’t know what to tell them.” “I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “But here’s what seems to me has happened.” “Some people,” I said, “are unable to make the payments on their mortgages. These mortgages are not held by the banks…
A group of professionals wearing hard hats walks into the climate-controlled pedestrian bridge that links a parking garage to the new terminal at Indianapolis International Airport. Circular ceiling fixtures light up in a pattern of red and blue, and a chorus of electronic-sounding sighs greets them: “Ahhh.” The playful, interactive installation by Los Angeles-based Electroland is called “Connections,” and it’s expected to become a favorite of the traveling public. The Indianapolis Airport Authority dedicated $3.89 million of the $1.1 billion…
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jill Long Thompson promises to buoy Indiana’s slumping rural counties with a three-tiered
incentive plan. Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels has a different vision for stoking the state economy. He wants to build on Indiana’s
strengths–such as world-class research at universities–to innovate and create jobs.
An acute physician shortage in Indiana is driving a request for an additional $5 million in annual funding to expand enrollment at the state’s only medical school. The Indiana University School of Medicine’s Physician Workforce Task Force conducted a study in 2006 that found the state already had 3,500 fewer physicians than it should. Indiana had 12,534 doctors in 2005-a number that remains relatively flat because the medical school churns out the same number of graduates each year. Over the…
Critics are chirping like cicadas and basically singing the same song. One, get rid of Lynch, the sooner the better. And two, spend money, lots of it, on a “big-name” coach. If only it were as simple as the knee-jerks would have you believe. Perhaps they have forgotten, but Indiana has a lame-duck athletic director, Rick Greenspan, who won’t clean out his Assembly Hall office until Dec. 31. A search committee is vetting applicants. I’m told there are exceptional candidates…
Charter Homes recruited and paid buyers to take out inflated mortgages on dozens of central Indiana homes it built, promising to manage the properties as rentals and make payments for the owners, current and former Charter business partners say.
A person’s DNA may someday determine how doctors diagnose illness and prescribe affordable treatment. That same genetic makeup also might help doctors determine whether a person suffering from cancer might be predisposed to respond or not respond to chemotherapy or another type of innovative or experimental treatment. That future picture of health care delivery, however, is missing a key piece. It doesn’t address what those advancements might mean for health insurance and other related questions about medical coverage. Our current…
“What happens next?” is a fundamental element of the theater. It’s a question that, if planted properly in the heads of audience members, keeps them enthusiastically coming back after intermission. But in “Evil Dead: the Musical,” the intermission question isn’t so much, “What happens next?” as it is, “What body part will be cut off next?” And, “How much of the spattering blood will reach me here in the third row?” I’m no fan of spoilers, so I won’t answer…
As we approach the final stretch in this year’s election season, it’s easy to get desensitized to the political rhetoric. Sometimes, though, there’s an issue that transcends the partisan divide and deserves to cut through the clutter: Local government reform is such an issue. Indiana’s Constitution created a multilayered system of county, township and municipal government in 1851. This might have been appropriate when most travel was by horseback, but today it’s left Hoosiers to support more than 3,000 units…
For much of his adult life, Don Main was a rocker rather than a restaurateur. But fate-along with a pressing need to find a more profitable line of work-drove him to seek his fortune in a kitchen rather than onstage. Main, president and co-owner of Puccini’s Smiling Teeth, began his peculiar career change back in 1990, after a decadeand-a-half stint as a professional-but not very well-paid-musician. At age 36, the bassist and lead vocalist for the band The Late Show…
My sister’s kids, Deniece and Denephew, think it is just hilarious to watch their fumbling uncle trying to send a text message-which has recently become the No. 1 use of cell phones, instead of talking. I poke and prod one measly letter at a time. Meanwhile, the kids-with agile thumbs and secondnature knowledge of a cell phone touch pad-are incredible. To watch them is to see an intricate ballet of the opposable digits (pas de pouces) performed at lightning speed….
Emboldened by the deal he signed to put his company’s name on the Indianapolis Colts’ new home, Forrest Lucas has launched
an arsenal of creative-some would say unorthodox-initiatives to fortify his growing company. Many of them are designed to
help Lucas Oil Products Inc. go head to head with the oil industry’s biggest players.
A new clinic that is on the cusp of conducting human trials in Indianapolis could distinguish itself as a key player in drug development, not only within the state, but nationally as well. Centurion Clinical Research LLC serves pharmaceutical companies and medical-device makers that need to test their products before they can be approved for widespread use. That first phase, in which healthy people are paid to participate in the overnight studies, is critical in determining the safety and success…
Indiana’s most seasoned entrepreneurs aren’t standing idly by as the nation slides into what many economists believe will
be the deepest recession since the early 1980s.
(Author’s note: I submitted this column Oct. 14, with full knowledge that the world may have come to an end by the time it is published.) It’s swing time. Candidates for office, state and federal, are swinging and slinging mud at one another. In a last-ditch effort to scare voters, Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of hanging out with Bill Ayers, co-founder of the Weathermen, a militant group of the 1970s. In reality, by the time Ayers met Obama, his…
