Economic development experts have long contended that business investment and good jobs gravitate to places
where business, government and higher education are on the ball and get along together.
If one of the three legs doesnâ??t carry its weight, the other…
The conversation between my neighbors, Paula and Paul Plain, interrupts the enjoyment I get from sitting on the deck in the dark of the night. They generally agree on whatever subject they discuss, but their voices nonetheless displace nature’s quiet. Thus, I find myself an unwilling participant in their nocturnal conversations. Last week, they were discussing the idea that young adult Hoosiers should be encouraged to remain in Indiana. “I’m so glad,” Paula crooned, “that 80 percent of central Indiana’s…
State and local leaders are turning up the amp on the importance of higher education, but they’re also trying to tune students into the message that being college-educated doesn’t have to mean spending four years at a university. In recent weeks, both Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels have loudly proclaimed the state’s need for more workers with twoyear degrees. While government officials have long said the state needs a more educated work force to attract business,…
At Indianapolis-based Adult and Child Mental Health Center Inc., Executive Director Bob Dunbar has developed a contingency plan as he works on the agency’s $25 million budget for next year. He has two versions of a spending plan for the center, which provides mental health services for 4,200 children and adults a year. One includes moderate cuts tied to state funding changes, and the other deals with massive cuts pushed by the federal government. In the worst-case scenario, as much…
Health advocates beamed with a â??told-you-soâ?? response this week when state officials announced that cigarette
sales dropped dramatically after taxes were raised last July.
Sales fell nearly 18 percent, apparently a direct result of boosting the tax 44 cents to a…
Lots of Indiana towns will do almost anything to get a factory or warehouse. That often means skipping pointed
questions about corporate citizenship for fear of losing the project.
A Lebanon city council member isn’t looking the other way, though.
Dick Robertson…
Weir Cook has been dead a long time, since 1943, but a military veterans group wants to bring his name
back to what is now Indianapolis International Airport.
The war heroâ??s name was on the airport from 1944, a…
Williams Randall Marketing Communications pulled a surprise victory by snatching the $2.5 million Indiana Office of Tourism
Development advertising account away from incumbent Hirons & Co. and eight other bidders, most of which were larger than Williams
Randall. The two-year contract starts July 1.
One of the first things a student in Economics 101 learns is the fundamental concept of supply and demand. Who can forget those familiar graphs that show the two crossing curves and the critical point where they intersect-the price of the particular good. Next, we learned the effect of shifts in supply and demand, which lead to either an increase or decrease in price. Visually, those graphs allowed us to see how an increase in demand, without a commensurate increase…
For the first time in decades, the Internal Revenue Service is making a major revision to the way not-for-profits disclose information about their finances, governance and operations. Coming in the wake of scrutiny from federal lawmakers and regulators alike, the changes to IRS Form 990 that take effect next year require not-for-profit leaders to provide more information on executive compensation and potential conflicts of interest, for example. And for the first time ever, most organizations will be required to file…
It isn’t easy providing tomatoes to the nation. Consider the ongoing struggle at Red Gold Inc. The state’s largest food processor, which is headquartered north of Anderson in Orestes, was all but locked out of buying tomatoes from Indiana growers under…
Encouraging new development-residential and commercial-is such a high priority in many communities these days that one would think both the private and public sectors would rush to break ground before the impulse passes. But as ESPN college football analyst Lee Corso often responds each Saturday during the season to the observations of others, “Not so fast my friend.” Before construction actually starts, all parties involved in a proposed project, if it is to be successful, must reach consensus on a…
My buddy Andy hates his name. He suffers because his parents were excessively influenced by “Wheel of Fortune” and named him Andreas Fawlty Towers. After years of teasing, Andy now hates just about everything. For example, he and I were having lunch at the redesigned “Steak, Shake and Sushi” as he complained about the new menu. “Foreign foods,” he said, groaning. “They take a perfectly fine menu of American classics and add something no one ought to eat. It’s bad…
Al Hubbard, the Indianapolis businessman who stepped down last year as director of President Bushâ??s National
Economic Council, is quoted in a recent Barronâ??s column as hammering Floridians and others living along U.S.
coasts for squeezing the tourniquet on additional…
National pharmacy chains such as CVS and Walgreens are not the only ones to experience “dumpster-diving” by investigative reporters. These drugstores were merely the first to be featured in media reports about customers’ personal information being disposed of without being destroyed first, a violation of state and federal privacy laws. Diving in Local reporters have since rummaged through the trash of mortgage brokers, title insurance companies, fitness centers, banks, law firms, hospitals and government organizations. While searching through the trash,…
Tax attorney Sandy Bickle looked forward this summer to taking her first two-week vacation since 1976. But the latest property reassessment and the tax bills to follow are expected to generate a slew of appeals, prompting Bickle to rethink her plans. “I’ll probably take one, but it won’t be two weeks,” lamented Bickle, who serves in an of-counsel capacity at Ice Miller LLP. “I expect to be very busy.” She’s not alone. Tax lawyers, consultants and appraisers all likely will…
Planners and politicians spent the better part of a decade and untold millions of dollars studying a mass transit system between
downtown and the suburbs. They have little to show for it except mounds of reports and an estimate of $690 million, but the
boys in bib overalls at the Indiana Transportation Museum think they can get it done for much less.
Should a city give incentives to companies that want to leave the city and expand in another town?
That question is dogging Muncie officials after they offered a $600,000 loan to a Spanish company that plans
to move an auto-parts plant…
A federal bill intended to bail out student loan lenders like Sallie Mae, one of central Indiana’s top employers, has raced like a bullet through Congress-a remarkable feat for Washington lawmakers. But what the future holds for embattled student lenders remains murky. While the newly passed measure will increase liquidity by allowing the U.S. Department of Education to buy loans, it leaves responsibility for working out the details to bureaucrats. In effect, Congress said in the bill that the Department…
If the price of corn keeps going higher, the best investment any of us could make would be to turn our lawns into cornfields. Before we do that, though, we would need to buy farm equipment and fertilizer to get the field ready. After we grow the stuff, we would have to transport it to a processing plant and turn it into ethanol. Then, we would need to ship the ethanol to the refinery where it would get mixed in…
