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Late taxpayers get break with state’s amnesty plan: Reprieve likely a good opportunity, planners say

Individuals and companies that owe taxes to the state are being given a chance to pay up without interest, fees or penalties during a two-month amnesty window opened by the Indiana Department of Revenue. The tax amnesty-the first one offered by Indiana and unusually generous compared with other states’ programs-is touted as a way to add an estimated $65 million to the state’s coffers and provide delinquent payers with a way to clear debt off their books. More than $1.3…

TAWN PARENT Commentary: Big hankering for the Big Easy

Once you’ve lived in New Orleans, you never really leave. A part of you stays on. You don’t feel quite whole again except when you return. Then it’s like regaining an appendage you had learned to live without, but suddenly realize how much you have missed. Transfixed by events there over the past month, I have been missing that part of me I left behind in 1996 when I drove a U-Haul north after three years as a reporter and…

BULLS & BEARS: Hedge funds on hot seat as fourth quarter nears

As the third quarter winds to a close, investors find the stock market behaving much as it did last year. At this point in both 2004 and 2005, the S&P 500 index (with dividends reinvested) had risen about 2 percent. Most Wall Street pundits are predicting the market will finish this year with a repeat of last year’s performance, when a post-election rally pushed the S&P 500 to a 10.9-percent return. One group of investors is praying they are right:…

BEHIND THE NEWS: Investors face long odds in latest Conseco class action

Class-action attorneys hit the jackpot three years ago when Conseco Inc. agreed to settle securitiesfraud litigation for $120 million. At the time, it was the 10thbiggest settlement for a case of its kind. This time around, attorneys, and the investors they represent, appear likely to go home empty-handed. Indianapolis federal Judge David Hamilton in July quietly dismissed a securitiesfraud case filed three years ago on behalf of investors who held Conseco stock between April 2001 and August 2002, a span…

Network takes aim at digital surplus: Firm to sell programs for unused TV channels

Multicast Networks Group LLC plans to launch the network in 2006, said industry veteran Michael Ruggiero, who heads the 22-year-old ALL TV Services communications consulting firm. “We know the industry needs more content. Broadcast groups we’ve talked with are very excited about the concept,” said Ruggiero, chairman of Multicast. Ruggiero also is vice president of distribution for The Tube Music Network, developed by MTV co-founder Les Garland. Ruggiero recently helped broker a deal to run The Tube on digital channels…

Fly by security – for a price: ‘Registered traveler’ program to let passengers pay to avoid long lines

Business fliers accustomed to first-class seating will soon be eligible for privileged security screening at Indianapolis International Airport. Airport operator BAA Indianapolis is about to seek proposals from firms to operate a “registered traveler” program. It will entitle any frequent travelers who pass a government background check to use special security checkpoints-bypassing long lines and trouserloosening “secondary screening” passengers must sometimes endure. No more suffering in line behind bubble-gum-popping teens headed for Aruba. Show your registered traveler ID card and…

BULLS & BEARS: Katrina crisis highlights need for self-sufficiency

No one really knows how Katrina is going to affect the economy. Some economists say it will be a whopper of a negative while some are convinced-and convincing-that she ultimately will be positive for GDP. But based on the fact the stock market, which is the great predicting machine, advanced a couple of percentage points in the week following the disaster, I’d have to go with the positive bet. The slow response and evacuation snafus were one problem, but the…

RETURN ON TECHNOLOGY: Logic puzzles not best way to grade techies

All my life, wellmeaning people have tried to get me interested in chess. It’s not like I don’t know the game; I do. It’s just that it bores me. I tell them I’ll take up chess when the rules are changed to allow the queen to conspire with the bishops to have the knights assassinate the king. Most such games bore me. Card games, even poker, seem insipid. There’s nothing at stake but money, after all. Logic puzzles leave me…

Ambassadair likes suitor: Chicago-based Waveland Investments might have jobs for ATA execs if it lands travel club

Ambassadair Travel Club Inc. may chart a new destination with the help of a Chicago private equity firm whose holdings range from gas station chain Clark Brands to coffee-pot-maker West Bend. Waveland Investments LLC is the face behind Waveland Holdings LLC, an entity named in court records as signing a letter of intent to acquire Ambassadair from bankrupt parent ATA Holdings Corp. While Ambassadair said it remains profitable, despite ATA’s troubles, it has lost more than 20 percent of the…

Selective Seconds: Consignment stores’ owner proud to be picky High-end items are the stock of choice at Selective Seconds

Vena Holden is picky about the seconds in her shops, specializing in better brand-name clothing, accessories, linens, gifts and shoes. She makes clear that hers is not a used clothing store. “We look for the higher-end items and are selective in what we take,” said Holden, 45, who founded the appropriately named Selective Seconds after years of shopping consignment shops for herself when she worked as a legal secretary and office manager for local law firm Plews Shadley Racher and…

Aquarium lessons carry hope for spinal-cord patients:

Purdue University researcher Richard Borgens developed a fascination with nerve regeneration during childhood, when he watched the newts in his father’s aquarium regrow legs bitten off by fish. Today, he’s developing nerve-regeneration methods that may prove instrumental in treating spinal-cord injuries. Borgens directs Purdue’s Center for Paralysis Research and is the founder of Andara Life Sciences Inc., a startup whose treatments are showing promise in clinical trials. One of Borgens’ therapies involves the patented oscillating field stimulator device, which stimulates…

Proposal aimed at curbing medical mishaps: Indiana hospitals, surgery centers may have to start submitting data on serious errors by the first of the year

The state health department wants to spotlight serious medical errors in hopes the scrutiny will reduce the likelihood of future mishaps. The department’s Indiana Hospital Council recommended last month that it start requiring hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers to disclose 27 severe problems-also called “never events”- within 15 days of their discovery. The list of those events, which was devised a few years ago by the not-forprofit National Quality Forum, includes surgeries performed on the wrong body part or the…

Inside the United Way: Can new campaign rise to the challenge?:

United Way of Central Indiana hopes to raise $36.6 million this year to address a range of community needs-a difficult task given the charitable response to Hurricane Katrina and the loss of some onetime gifts. As the campaign kicks off, IBJ is taking a close look at the organization and its massive fundraising drive. Where does the money come from? How is it spent? And who’s leading the charge? Pages39A-41A Big names, big bucks The local United Way has received…

Pocket-protector crowd to preach quality: Group plans first conference to promote better practices in information technology

Because of them, people stocked basements with food, guns and ammo. Others fell prostrate on hilltops and sang Kumbaya. There was fear software developers would inadvertently destroy the world with the infamous Y2K computer glitch, in the opening hours of 2000. These days, however, it is the developers who are worried-about things like how a glitch can give hackers access to customer credit card and Social Security numbers. Or get companies in trouble when software doesn’t capture information required by…

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS: Many aren’t prepared for jobs of the future

To be illiterate in our society is more than an inconvenience, or an obstacle to making a living. It is also a badge of shame. That’s why we should all be concerned about the results of a January study that told us almost a million Indiana workers-one-third of the work force-failed to meet the minimum literacy standards for knowledge-based jobs. Many of us in the fields of research and policymaking have responded to this disturbing finding the same way we…

SPORTS: IU getting it right where tailgating is concerned

My alma mater, Indiana University, has taken its share of licks in recent times. In fact, I’ve used this space to throw some of the punches. But its recent decision-coinciding with the start of football season-to try to oust the party animals from the jungle just south of Memorial Stadium on game days was prudent, correct and too long in coming. This, folks, has been a human and legal calamity waiting to happen. The “jungle” is a park-like area across…

Don’t turn back on local needs: United Way deserves support as much as hurricane victims

How do you compete with Hurricane Katrina? For three weeks, we have been inundated by images of suffering and devastation on the Gulf Coast. In the midst of it all, United Way of Central Indiana has struggled to attract attention to the kickoff of its annual campaign. It’s a tough sell, just as it was four years ago when another horrific event-the 9/11 terrorist attacks-coincided with the campaign kickoff. “It took the fund-raising community about three years to recover from…

Katrina could complicate sale of Emmis TV station: Undaunted, New Orleans WVUE begins to rebuild

WVUE-TV Channel 8 in New Orleans has no transmitter, no offices, little functional equipment and a skeleton staff. The station owned by Indianapolis-based Emmis Communications Corp. also has no paying advertisers and a depleted audience, thanks to Hurricane Katrina. The devastation wrought by one of the nation’s worst natural disasters puts plans to sell the station on hold as WVUE officials survey the millions of dollars in damage to their facilities and equipment and fight to get back on the…

United Way campaign facing dual challenges this year: Onetime gifts, charitable response to Katrina devastation complicates already-complex fund drive

It’s never easy for United Way of Central Indiana-raising money seldom is. But this year, organizers went into the annual fund-raising drive with an additional challenge: replacing $1.5 million in one-time donations that helped get the 2004 campaign to its $36.6 million goal. Their task is complicated by the fact that this year’s effort started just as the philanthropic response to Hurricane Katrina kicked into high gear. Americans have given nearly $1 billion to disaster relief already, and the impact…

Campaign just part of local United Way: Agency aims to meet community needs

United Way of Central Indiana got its start in 1918 as Indianapolis’ War Chest. Many decades and several name changes later, the organization still is fighting to raise enough money to meet vital community needs. Leaders kicked off the 2005 campaign this month, trying to raise $36.6 million, mostly from workplace campaigns and corporate gifts. Together, the two sources represent about 97 percent of all pledges. UWCI’s campaign is the 22nd-largest in the country. On these two pages, IBJ details…