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NOTIONS: A passionate, personal plea for public smoking ban

I’d rather not be here today. And I don’t mean just this public hearing. I mean if I weren’t responsible for two sons and 27 employees, I’d rather not be anywhere. Since you began this process, I’ve watched your proceedings on TV. I’ve heard folks question one another’s statistics and call one another names. I’ve heard the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, of which I’m a member, say we must “balance” human health and corporate profit. And I’ve had Council members…

Special Report: Flawed funding: Years of guaranteed increases set stage for school crisis

Indiana’s decades-long effort to protect shrinking school corporations from drastic cutbacks may well backfire on the very districts that most depend on it-including Indianapolis Public Schools. Critics say the promise of more money regardless of enrollment has allowed some school systems to bloat their budgets, and now state legislators are poised to let the air out. School funding already represents more than one-third of Indiana’s $24 billion, twoyear budget, and lawmakers want to rein in expenses and eliminate a projected…

CHRIS KATTERJOHN Commentary: Be yourself-maximize your assets

Be who you are. Conversely, don’t try to be somebody you’re not. Focus on what you do best, and you’ll succeed. When we think of people who excel at anything … Joshua Bell playing the violin, Reggie Miller shooting three-pointers, Dr. Lawrence Einhorn treating cancer … we understand they have achieved their success by focusing on their God-given talents, developing them, and practicing, practicing, practicing. Communities are much the same, though the philosophy could be amended to read a more…

Changes sought in Citizens Gas pipeline project: Industrial customers argue that alliance drives up cost

Citizens Gas & Coke Utility should build a new pipeline to reap cheaper wholesale gas from the West and Canada, but it should ditch its unregulated partner on the project, say industrial customers and the state’s utility consumer watchdog. The Citizens Industrial Group and the Office of Utility Consumer Counselor don’t want Citizens Gas’ ProLiance Energy subsidiary to be involved in certain financing, ownership and management aspects of the proposed $17 million pipeline. They say the joint venture, known as…

BEHIND THE NEWS: Great Lakes board battled for sweet price from suitor Bulriss not talking Legal costs singe ITT

Great Lakes Chemical Corp. shareholders have had a lot to feel disappointed about in recent years. But there’s no way they can feel let down over the board’s handling of the company’s $1.5 billion sale to Connecticut-based Crompton Corp. A new regulatory filing shows directors of Indianapolis-based Great Lakes went to extraordinary lengths to extract every penny possible from Crompton before sealing the sale March 8. A blow-by-blow account contained in the filing shows the Great Lakes board first began…

Accounting firm looks overseas for help: Sarbanes-Oxley business sparks need for extra hands

Zietsman is one of several employees of PricewaterhouseCoopers who are in the United States to temporarily help the global accounting firm complete client audit work created by the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley corporate-accountability law. One rule, Section 404, requires corporations to assess the internal accounting controls they have in place to ensure their financial reporting is accurate and reliable-and requires accounting firms to vouch for those controls. Many public companies had to devote thousands of employee hours and millions of dollars to…

Departure of ATA exec still cloudy: Chief financial officer alleged termination was retaliation

When ATA Holdings Corp.’s chief financial officer “left the company” last June, as management ambiguously put it, many suspected the insider saw bankruptcy looming and wanted to bail out before the crash. David M. Wing, 53, may have seen something else that troubled him, suggests ATA’s most recent financial report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “Wing contends that he was terminated in retaliation for exercising his rights and obligations under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act,” states a settlement agreement Wing…

BULLS & BEARS: Where Weebles wobble, investors see opportunity

Remember the toys back in the ’70s called Weebles? They were little egg-shaped people weighted so they would always stand upright. The manufacturer’s advertising slogan was, “Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down.” The stock market has wobbled like a Weeble for six years. For stocks, the first quarter ended with a thud with the Standard & Poor’s 500 down about 3 percent and the NASDAQ down 8 percent. The price of oil went up more than 25 percent during…

WIP Downtown: Salon combines talented stylist, savvy tech guy 40 percent of appointments are made online

You won’t find People magazine in the waiting room at the WIP Downtown hair salon. “That magazine just encourages gossip,” explained co-owner Jeff Demaree. Contrary to the stereotype of hairdresser as therapist, Demaree wants his staff “to avoid discussing personal problems with customers because it makes the atmosphere more stressful.” Instead, Jeff and his wife, co-owner Kimberly Demaree, suggest discussing current events, politics-if they know they agree with the customer-TV, or recent WIP accomplishments such as photo shoots. “We want…

Charter school leaving train station location for its own ’empowerment center’:

21st Century Charter School is pulling away from Union Station. Nearly three years after reinventing 17,000 square feet of space that once housed a bar and Hooter’s restaurant, school sponsor Greater Educational Opportunities Foundation has plans to build a stand-alone facility about five miles to the north. GEO has agreed to buy a two-acre parcel at 25th Street and Capitol Avenue that was to be the site of the Fall Creek Retail Center, an ill-fated project that fell apart in…

Indiana’s annual exports hit another record high: State sent $19.1 billion in goods to other countries

Boosted by a strong fourth quarter, Indiana export sales jumped significantly in 2004, hitting a record high of $19.1 billion, the Indiana Economic Development Corp. reported. Indiana’s 2004 export total was 16.5-percent higher than 2003’s figure of $16.4 billion, exceeding the national pace of export growth of 13 percent. Indiana exported $4.9 billion worth of goods in last year’s fourth quarter, 22.7 percent more than in the third quarter of 2004 and 16 percent more than the fourth quarter of…

Cook treading into new territory: Bloomington medical firm makes move toward untapped stent market

Cook Inc. plans to slide its coated-stent ambitions from the heart down to another region of the body where a multimillion-dollar market awaits. The Bloomington-based medical-device maker recently started testing a product that uses the same drug Cook put on a coronary stent it tried to develop a couple of years ago with Guidant Corp. Instead of treating arteries near the heart, the Zilver PTX stent targets blockages in the major artery that runs through the thigh. Cook is the…

Navigating a painful journey: St. Vincent Pediatric Hospice helps families cope

Erin Sammons knew nothing about St. Vincent Pediatric Hospice when she gave birth to her son, Hart, last November. She just knew that Hart had a chromosome disorder, and doctors expected his life to last only minutes or maybe days. The hospice offered help, so she took it. Hart lived for almost a month, and Sammons said the hospice staff walked her family through every step of that journey. “It was a tragedy, and my heart breaks every day ……

New rules, players mean different conference session STATEHOUSE DISPATCH:

This is about the time each year when I write about the advent of the conference committee process, the black hole that not even the Stephen Hawkings of the legislative process can fathom. Just when you have figured out the session dynamics-leadership, partisan mischief, interconnections between issues and bills, and the relationships among key lawmakers-conference committees begin and all your presumed understanding flies out the window. Regardless of all the pablum you may hear about rules, what issues may be…

Crossroads’ work helps soldiers in Iraq: Money from project used for massive upgrades at Indianapolis operation

When the U.S. Army sought a contractor to manufacture a special identification panel for military vehicles in the mid-1990s, some shops didn’t think the contract was big enough to pursue. Others thought the work on the panel was too tedious. Locally based Easter Seals Crossroads Industrial Services didn’t hesitate to bid. Six years after supplying the Army with its first shipment of combat ID panels, Easter Seals Crossroads Industrial Services, a division of the not-for-profit Easter Seals Crossroads Rehabilitation Center,…

Legislators take moratorium on serious moratorium talk: Effort to curb health care construction much quieter

The push to corral health care construction in Indiana returned to the General Assembly with a lower dose of momentum this year. Several bills regulating development in one fashion or another made appearances during the session, but no major initiatives will make it out of the Statehouse, according to advocates on both sides of the issue. Prospects for another push to install a certificate-of-need law or a moratorium next year also appear hazy for now, say legislators who pitched bills…

Wellness provider expands: Summex Health planning bigger HQ on NW side

A leading provider of wellness programs for large companies will triple its office space in June to meet demand from employers eager to save on soaring health care costs. Indianapolis-based Summex Health Management Inc. and its 55 employees will vacate 10,000 square feet of office space in The Morley Group building on the northwest side and take up residence in roomier digs in nearby Woodland Corporate Park. The Duke Realty Corp. property provides Summex nearly 30,000 square feet, or the…

Smoking warriors expand battlefield: Health advocates accuse grocers, retailers of misleading public with smoke-free claims

Bars and restaurants aren’t the only firms that will soon feel the heat from health advocates pushing laws to ban smoking in public places. Some are broadening their gaze to drugstores and even supermarkets as potential health risks-and they’re naming names of offending businesses. It’s a radical approach in a mildmannered metro area, where few dare to poke fingers in the eyes of the business or political elite. And it’s in stark contrast to groups such as Smoke Free Indy,…

Banker fits bill at art museum: Ex-Bank One CEO O’Connor leads facility through final stages of $74M expansion

Just over a year after retiring from the top position at central Indiana’s largest bank, former Bank One of Indiana CEO Lawrence A. O’Connor Jr. found himself giving up his newfound freedom to run another big business-the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Making the jump from financial services to arts and culture might seem unlikely, but O’Connor, who’s been serving as IMA’s interim executive director since November, finds himself at home running Indianapolis’ largest arts-related not-for-profit. “This is a wonderful place,”…

SPORTS: Two cities, eight teams and miles of observations

ST. INDIANAPOLIS-OK, an explanation of the goofy dateline. I have just finished shuttling back and forth between St. Louis for the NCAA Men’s Final Four and Indy for the NCAA Women’s Final Four. Because of a speaking engagement in St. Louis and an obligation back here on the front end, I made three round trips in six days, covering 1,500 miles. It was worth it. Six games over four days resulting in two national champions, the University of North Carolina…