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Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield and Clarian Health have formed a partnership to serve Indiana’s Medicaid recipients. The new agreement means Medicaid participants can go to one of Clarian’s five hospitals in the Indianapolis area, as well as LaPorte Hospital and Bedford Regional Medical Center. Anthem oversees health benefits for 123,000 Medicaid patients in […]
More than 2,500 people have signed petitions opposing a proposed land swap that would make room for more retailing in Terre Haute. Responding to rising retail competition from Plainfield and Evansville, Terre Haute developers Gibson Development and Thompson Thrift want to swap 72 acres they own plus pay $9.2 million in return for the county […]
Center Township Trustee Carl Drummer and his predecessors have stockpiled more than money over the years. The trustee’s office
also holds a portfolio of mostly undeveloped properties worth at least $10 million. Several key parcels have been on the trustee’s
books-and off the tax rolls-for decades. Drummer has made some progress in finding uses for the properties since an IBJ special
report first questioned his holdings in November 2006. But it would have to be measured in inches. The most…
Last month, Brightpoint Inc. Chairman and CEO Bob Laikin was honored with Indiana University’s Distinguished Entrepreneurs-In-Residence Award. If the selection committee was looking for an executive with pluck, it chose well. The IU Kelley School of Business hosts the Distinguished Entrepreneurs-In-Residence program to inspire students and help them learn about the challenges of starting or expanding an emerging business. Laikin’s tumultuous and exciting journey left the students as dizzy as a day-long ride on the Kings Island Beast. Laikin founded…
By the time Jesse Kharbanda earned a Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford, the University of Chicago student already knew he wanted to advocate environmental policies in the developing world, someday. Eight years later, some might say Kharbanda has landed in the developing world, all right-Indiana, insofar as it’s considered the backwater of environmental stewardship. One might recall the state’s 49thplace ranking in a 2007 review of “greenest” states by Forbes magazine. Only West Virginia-a national leader in illiteracy-scored worse….
I cringed when I heard the news: Indiana is second to last when it comes to being green. We’re supposed to be America’s heartland. But instead of being known for the life sciences, economic initiatives or even our corn fields, we’re getting recognized for our dirty air and water. Last year, Forbes conducted a study to find the greenest states in the country. Vermont, Oregon and Washington topped the list. At the bottom: Alabama, Indiana and West Virginia. While Indiana…
For years, the Indianapolis not-for-profit once known as Bands of America built a reputation for organizing a series of regional marching band competitions that culminates in a national march-off here each November. In 2006, the organization broadened its scope through a merger with an East Coast advocacy group, marrying performance-based evidence that music education has value with research-backed efforts to keep school programs around. Now Music for All’s research is making waves nationally, and the organization just landed $495,000 to…
In the Middle Ages, the French coined a new word that today we would identify as “undertake.” Around 1828, this old French word, “entreprendre” was absorbed into the English language and after some use and m o d i fi c a t i o n s became a word we recognize and vener ate in our society today … entrepreneur. As a nation founded and populated by men and women who risked life and fortune to reach our shores,…
If memory serves, the year was 1982. I was in Bloomington covering a Bob Knight media gathering for the local daily when one of the employees of Indiana University’s sports information office tapped me on the shoulder and said I had an emergency call from my wife. I immediately picked up my notepad and tape recorder and called home. Our 2-yearold daughter was apparently seriously ill and my wife was in the process of taking her to the hospital emergency…
The prospect of urban sprawl might swallow up even those agencies tasked with planning for sprawl’s consequences. The Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Organization is exploring a merger with Anderson’s MPO, according to the Indianapolis agency’s 2008 Unified Planning Work Program report. “The rapid growth of the Northeast Corridor has blurred the boundaries between the Anderson and Indianapolis MPOs; a joint committee is currently exploring whether consolidation is warranted,” states the report. MPOs are virtually invisible agencies to the public even though…
At an aging building at 863 Massachusetts Ave., they pass through a metal detector and wait in line to show a clerk their
identification and copies of overdue bills. Center Township Trustee Carl Drummer sometimes helps. The Trustee’s Office received
an average of $6.9 million each of the last seven years, mostly from taxes, to provide poor relief-now known as township assistance.
But only about $2 million reached the penniless each year, with much of the difference covering administrative overhead….
The next two weeks should be interesting ones in the General Assembly, but not for the reason you might expect. Now that bills have cleared their chambers of origin and moved across the Rotunda for consideration, there is a natural lull of sorts as lobbyists breathe a collective sigh of relief and gird themselves to battle with a different set of lawmakers. You saw this in recent days, as committee action again took center stage, and action on the floor…
Investors Sardar Biglari and Philip Cooley didn’t exactly hit it off with The Steak n Shake Co.’s top brass when they met in August to discuss the company’s future. Company Chairman Alan Gilman and Chief Financial Officer Jeff Blade “refused to disclose basic information” and “rebuffed disclosure of even niggling details like the number of employees at headquarters,” according to Biglari’s account of the meeting, which he included in a Jan. 23 letter to company shareholders. “We are suspect of…
Paul Gresk, the bankruptcy trustee overseeing the liquidation of Winona Memorial Hospital, is pushing for a showdown in court
to prove his claims that Winona’s former owner, Leland Medical Centers Inc., illegally transferred more than $4 million out
of Winona.
The next generation of environmental law is coming to a firm near you. Many law firms have existing practices that counsel clients on the complexities of complying with air and water permits or cleaning up contaminated properties. But now that the corporate sector is embracing “green” initiatives quicker than Al Gore accumulates carbon credits, environmental law is becoming as sexy as, say, intellectual property. Two of the city’s largest firms-Ice Miller LLP and Baker & Daniels LLP-recently unveiled so-called “green”…
Angry investors in Indiana and across the country are going to court to recover some of the billions of dollars they’ve lost on investments connected to subprime mortgages. Mortgage-backed investments have appeared on the balance sheets of companies and organizations large and small. And observers say write-downs totaling $100 billion at firms like Merrill Lynch, UBS and Bear Stearns are just the beginning. Various law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, are investigating whether investors were misled. “This crisis will affect…
My sons Zach and Austin came of voting age in 2006. That November, there weren’t many contested or competitive races where they lived (near Fort Wayne). Zach registered and voted, anyway. Austin didn’t bother. Zach and I gave Austin a hard time about that. Last September, Zach headed off to college in California, while Austin and his girlfriend, Karolina, began their freshman year at New York University. A few weeks after arriving in Manhattan, there was a campaign rally in…
Although he collects an average $6.9 million each year for poor relief, mostly from taxes, Center Township Trustee Carl Drummer
is rarely asked to explain his finances. Drummer’s budget is filed-unread-each year in the Indianapolis City Controller’s
office. The 66-employee Indiana Department of Local Government Finance reviews it, along with budgets from every other taxing
entity in the state. Year-end reports go to the State Board of Accounts, a 282-worker agency that conducts 2,700 to 3,000
audits of Indiana counties,…
On Jan. 14, I wrote about the new Indiana stamp from the U.S. Postal Service. I objected to the selection of a farm tractor with a cityscape in the distance as being typical of Indiana and invited readers to comment. Below are a few typical remarks: From a reader in Tennessee who grew up in Kokomo: “As I read your column, I was torn between what you were saying and my warm fuzzy memories of my childhood. … Indiana represents…
