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The first week of the new year was pretty lousy. All the major indexes are now in the hole for the year, with some industries down 5 percent or more. So is that it for 2005? Should we just pack up and come back again in 12 months? The media is jampacked with stories about how the first week’s performance determines the rest of the month’s outcome, which determines the rest of the year. And most experts had high hopes…
Indianapolis-based Anthem Foundation gave Learning Well Inc. $100,000 to open two school-based clinics in Marion County and support its efforts to address childhood obesity and asthma. But the effect will go much further than that, one board member said. “We’re finally seeing stability and potential for growth,” said Betty Wilson, a member of Learning Well’s executive committee and CEO of The Health Foundation of Greater Indianapolis, which has plowed millions into the program and is a driving force behind the…
I always wonder what people are talking about when they lament Indiana’s “brain drain.” Statistics usually follow, detailing the college graduates taking jobs in other states. It is perhaps a contrarian’s viewpoint, but we should, in fact, encourage these young people to go seek their fortunes. The fact that they are leaving is a symptom, not the problem. Our problem is there are not enough Hoosiers who can create the jobs that could employ our young graduates. We do have…
The city’s only National Public Radio affiliate is launching a local news department for the first time in its almost 20 years of operation, and has signed a deal that could gain it thousands of listeners south of the city’s center. WFYI-FM 90.1 hired veteran TV newscaster Scott Hoke in late November as local host of NPR’s “Morning Edition” and will hire a reporter within six weeks. The radio station plans to soon after launch a weekly sports show featuring…
Whenever Indiana and Purdue universities get together on the hardwood or the debate arena, the rivalry is intense. But as various public and private players around the state put on a full-court press for Indiana’s life sciences future, the schools have teamed up like a dynamic backcourt duo. The Scientist, a biweekly publication delivered to 75,000 people worldwide, in November ranked Purdue No. 2 and Indiana No. 10 on a list of “Best Places to Work in Academia,” based on…
It’s good to have job growth in the U.S. economy once again, even if the monthly gains in employment reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics occasionally fall short of some analysts’ expectations. After a long spell of minuscule job growth in the wake of a painful recession, we’ve grown used to disappointing announcements from the federal statistical agency responsible for tracking the labor market. But the recent report on the employment situation in December caps a year-long streak of…
The state ran into problems, though, when several insurers became insolvent, which cost the state more than $1 million in recent years. Starting Jan. 1, all the premiums began going into a trust account, which pays the claims as needed. The insurance providers will not be called upon unless that account runs dry, Cooper said. The state safety net for Worker’s Compensation insurance began the new year with a new plan to pay claims, one that might lead to fewer…
Last week in this space, legislators were challenged to learn something about our state. This week, we will provide some data so our busy representatives do not have to do the work themselves. All our data are derived from the excellent States-in-Profile section of STATS Indiana, maintained by the Indiana Business Research Center at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, a service supported by the Indiana Department of Commerce. The Indiana economy is the 15th-largest in the nation. Our gross…
Indiana’s new governor will obviously have the opportunity to shape a new government and plans to do so. But what has been unsaid about what the new structure may look like is how our assumptions about government and the delivery of government services have changed so radically since the last party change in the office in 1988, and even since the last election. The growth of the Internet and public acceptance of doing business online has Hoosiers now expecting that…
A plan to build a new state psychiatric hospital near the IUPUI campus might wind up back on the drawing board. The new administration of Gov. Mitch Daniels wants to take a hard look at the freshly minted proposal to build a replacement for Larue D. Carter Memorial Hospital off of 16th Street on the near-north side. The hospital currently occupies part of an old Veterans Affairs complex on Cold Spring Road. Last month, the state unveiled a plan to…
For years, I have been listening to Paul Harvey on the radio decrying the low savings rate of Americans. Our seemingly profligate ways, spending nearly all we earn, will lead us to the poorhouse, if not the eternal fires of debtors’ damnation. Many of my learned colleagues share this view. Americans are spending too much, consuming too much, saving too little. They tell us the personal-savings rate hit an all-time low in October, at 0.1 percent. That means we put…
A victor has emerged from the Monument Circle chocolate war, and the spoils go to the Indiana-based warrior. Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory closed its store at 28 Monument Circle Dec. 31, leaving South Bend Chocolate Co.’s Chocolate Café next door as the Circle’s sole sweets source. The franchise’s closing is one of several changes afoot in the downtown restaurant scene. Coming attractions include an Oregonbased seafood chain and the return of local favorite Eh! Formaggio, which is shopping for a…
At least until mid-December, we thought we had a tentative handle on the General Assembly’s focus for the 2005 session. We knew the new governor and the new Republican House majority would team up on economic development initiatives, improving governmental efficiency and restructuring state agencies. The biggest task would be crafting a realistic state budget in the face of adversity and uncertainty. The regular “stuff of government” would also be squeezed in and some thorny telecommunications issues would be raised,…
A Noblesville family took on the U.S. nursing shortage in 1999 armed with only $30,000 and a home computer and wound up creating a multimillion-dollar business. The nursing shortage still lingers, but the family’s company, Innovative Placements Inc., takes in more than $8 million in annual revenue by filling employment gaps with traveling nurses. Twin sisters Retha Clark and Letha Engelman, and Letha’s husband, John, place more than 100 nurses in 39 states. They want to add 50 more nurses…
Attorneys for Conseco Inc. have a new target in their legal assault a g a i n s t f o r m e r C E O S t e p h e n Hilbert. It’s Haverstick Consulting Inc., the Carmelbased company Hilbert now leads. In court papers filed last week in Hamilton County, Conseco attorneys charge that Hilbert and his wife, Tomisue, transferred millions of dollars into Haverstick in recent years but did not receive stock of equal…
When Maureen Ferguson was a lobbyist for the Indiana Petroleum Council, she went skiing for the first time, in Colorado. As her ski instructor was taking her up the mountain, he asked her what she did for a living. When she told him, he “went off” on how the oil industry was corrupt and running the government, and she recalled that she found herself fearing for her life. Now when someone asks Ferguson what she does, sometimes she tells them,…
Your spouse attempts to drop you off at the curb and unload your wheelchair as an airport cop who seems to mistake you for a terrorist barks an order to drive away immediately. Once inside, you get separated from your travel companions because you had to take an out-of-the-way wheelchair ramp. And heaven help you if the checkpoint screener is having a bad day. Gregory S. Fehribach has to imagine such scenarios-not that the life-long wheelchair user hasn’t already endured…
My family and I spent Christmas week on a boat, in the ocean, with hundreds of people from Indonesia. And because they were comforting us, not vice versa, it seemed all wrong. The day after Christmas, Pam, Austin, Zach and I awoke at 3 a.m. We showered, dressed and lugged our suitcases downstairs. At 4 a.m., the limousine pulled up in our snowy driveway. The chauffeur loaded our luggage into the Cadillac’s trunk, helped us aboard and drove through icy…
Joanna Taft isn’t content helping to develop emerging artists. She also wants to help develop art patrons-and the historic neighborhood around what will soon be the former home of IUPUI’s Herron School of Art at Pennsylvania and 16th streets. So Taft, executive director at the nearby Harrison Center for the Arts, is working on plans for a charter high school to occupy a portion of the space IUPUI will vacate when it moves the art school to the campus proper…
Aging medical bills that fell off the radar screen, unused bank accounts that were never closed and continue to rack up monthly fees, or an erroneous charge placed on the report by mistake all can wreak havoc on consumers’ plans. Beginning in March, however, a law signed by President Bush in December 2003 will make it easier for Indiana residents to keep closer tabs on those credit reports and head off troubles at the pass. The Fair and Accurate Credit…
