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STATEHOUSE DISPATCH: Legislators want tough reforms, but not too tough

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…

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Law firms making green push: Environmental teams provide marketing boost

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”…

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Ex-member: Township board ‘bored by the budget’

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,…

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INVESTING: How Wall Street firms wounded themselves

There will be plenty of future litigation over the subprime mortgage mess. The city of Cleveland has sued 21 of the nation’s biggest mortgage firms, claiming their s u b p r i m e – l e n d i n g practices created a public nuisance that hurt property values and city tax collections. And the FBI, in conjunction with the Securities and Exchange Commission, is looking into the various players to see if fraud was committed. While…

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ECONOMIC ANALYSIS: Why Hoosiers should shed distrust of referendums

Should Indiana’s taxpayers vote on school construction? This seemingly simple question is a vexing issue for the Legislature. The debate surrounding the issue is surprisingly misguided and emotional. A few ill-informed editorials have not added value to the debate. Let me add a bit of data to the discussion to enlarge our understanding. Under Indiana’s current system of government, no elected official reviews the complete budgetary process for local government spending. This, perhaps more than anything else, has caused our…

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A new desire for streetcars

Electric streetcars are an old idea that should be brought back, some civic leaders believe.

IBJ reporter Chris Oâ??Malley writes today that heavyweights including Indiana Convention and Visitors Association
President Bob Bedell are backing a not-for-profit called Downtown Indianapolis…

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VIEWPOINT: Cookie-cutter schools: a fatally flawed idea

What would happen if Congress passed a law requiring every U.S. statehouse to use the exact same building design? And that every city hall, every fire station and library must be built from a canned design? Imagine being told that, from now on, every house in the state would have the exact same design, so homeowners could spend less on design costs. It sounds crazy to think one design fits all, but that’s exactly what lawmakers are considering for educational…

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STATEHOUSE DISPATCH: Tax reform nudges state toward a la carte government

Most observers have viewed the 2008 legislative session as one almost singlemindedly devoted to property tax reform. While, of course, that is true, if you step back, a broader truism begins to emerge. This is not only a session destined to produce property tax reform, but one that begins the process of changing the role of government and how it intrudes into the lives of Hoosiers-or how it helps them, depending upon your perspective. Beyond property tax reform, this session…

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INVESTING: World’s response to woes likely to make them worse

From one end of the world to the other, governments are drawing a blueprint. They’re doing exactly what you would expect given the recent fall in global equities. If the past is any indication, they’re going to make matters worse. That means the best way to make a bundle over the next 12 months might be to short-sell stocks-in other words, to bet against the market. The current problems began in August when the subprime problem erupted onto the national…

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Demand for adult day care rises with aging population: Joy’s House, other local facilities expecting growth

Joy’s House on Broad Ripple Avenue provides day care services for 23 people. Often at or near capacity, the not-for-profit is raising funds to build a $1.6 million addition that will quadruple its current size. The cramped quarters, where activities include shooting balls in pint-size basketball hoops, underscores the need for extra space. And the participants are not children; they’re adults-the parents of baby boomers who’ve been thrust into the role of care giver. Adult day care centers steadily are…

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Are these incentives a good deal?

Gov. Mitch Daniels dished out $6.3 million in incentives as part of Defender Directâ??s expansion announcement
yesterday. But was the carrot a good deal for us taxpayers?

Defender Direct, which sells home security and satellite dish systems, plans to add 1,100…

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Ranking Indianapolis’ best mayor

Former Indianapolis mayors have a way of staying in the news.

Richard Lugar has climbed to the top echelons of the U.S. Senate. Bill Hudnut is quoted regularly from his
position at the Urban Land Institute, a Washington, D.C., not-for-profit that…

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STATEHOUSE DISPATCH: Legislators avoiding games as they tackle tax reform

People outside the legislative process finally are understanding that there is no perfect solution to the property tax reform dilemma, that it is not a zero-sum game, that there will be winners and losers, and that this is not a Democrat vs. Republican issue. What they still do not realize is how hard legislators are working to accommodate the legitimate concerns of homeowners, governmental units and schools, businesses, and agricultural interests, and how difficult it is to assemble a package…

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ECONOMIC ANALYSIS: Why subprime ‘crisis’ is not as severe as it seems

Over the next few years, quite a few doctoral dissertations are going to be written about the subprime loan market, and its effects on the overall U.S. economy. And whatever the effects turn out to be, it is certain that this financial mess has all the twists and turns of a spy novel. Here is part of the plot: Over the past decade and half, home prices skyrocketed. The causes included rapid growth in the U.S. economy, aging baby-boomer purchases…

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EDITORIAL: State negligent on smoking ban: Lawmakers sidestep serious issue

State negligent on smoking ban Lawmakers sidestep serious issue We’d like to think the demise of Rep. Charlie Brown’s bill that would have banned workplace smoking statewide was just another casualty of the property tax reform wave. More likely, the bill died because our legislators don’t have the will to tackle the sad state of Hoosier health. Brown’s bill died in a House committee Jan. 23 after a brief hearing in which testimony on the bill’s behalf was cut off…

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Public offerings rise in ’07: Three Indiana companies hit turbulence after IPOs

The market for initial public offerings in Indiana was on the upswing last year, as the number of companies to go public tripled, from one in 2006 to three in 2007. Locally based HHGregg Inc., Kokomobased Haynes International Inc. and LaPorte-based LaPorte Bancorp. Inc. became publicly traded. The fact that three more companies in Indiana became public doesn’t represent a trend. But four others that have filed IPO registration statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission bolster the belief that…

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Lawmaker wants car owners to be aware of data recorders

The “event data recorder,” a so-called black box car makers have installed in their cars over the last decade and a half as
part of air-bag systems, can be a double-edged sword for motorists. Yet they likely don’t even know it’s spying from under
their seat or dashboard.

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Spending your government check

If you pay taxes, President Bush and leaders in Congress have agreed to send you at least $600 in the
hope youâ??ll spend it and pump more life into the economy.

They have their wishes, but Americans are independent sorts.

What would…

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Blame Daniels for the economy?

At this point four years ago, now-Gov. Mitch Daniels had started outlining a platform based on revitalizing
the economy.

The economy had been headed south since the â??70s and had taken another beating early in the decade. Voters
were only too…

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