In Business

Hundreds of steelworkers, who packed the Statehouse in Indianapolis on Tuesday to ask legislators to vote down several so-called right-to-work proposals, gather for a group picture.
(Photograph by AJ Mast/The Times.)

More than 600 steelworkers packed the marble halls of the Indiana Statehouse on Tuesday asking legislators to vote down several so-called right-to-work proposals.

“We realize it’s a Republican-controlled House and Senate, but we’re hoping enough Republicans see the light and stop this,” said Jim Furan, of LaPorte, a heater at ArcelorMittal’s Burns Harbor plant.

At least five different proposals pending in legislative committees would take away some collective bargaining rights from union workers or prohibit non-union employees from having to contribute a fair share toward union-represented services.

“Eventually, you won’t have a union to fight for your benefit packages,” said Calvin Caldwell, of Valparaiso, a mechanic at ArcelorMittal’s Burns Harbor plant.

Pete Trinidad, of Portage, vice president of United Steel Workers Local 6787, said that’s exactly what Republicans want.

“They are just freewheeling attacking labor, which was a big problem for them in the last election,” Trinidad said.

But labor clearly is not giving up without a fight.

Trinidad said Tuesday was steel’s biggest lobbying day at the Statehouse in years, and steelworkers wearing blue USW ballcaps were easily spotted throughout the rotunda, hallways and galleries of the Statehouse.
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Gary’s hopes for a land-based casino may have been dashed Thursday, one month into a four-month legislative session.

Speaking with reporters, Senate President David Long, R-Fort Wayne, said he is not likely to allow a committee hearing on Senate Bill 41, permitting a Gary inland casino, until Majestic Star comes out of bankruptcy.

“Right now, I just don’t think we’re ready to deal with a land-based casino in Gary because I don’t really think we have a final answer as to who the owners are and what they really want,” Long said.
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Add that big packet of tax forms arriving in your mailbox just after New Year’s Day to the list of items replaced by technology.

The Indiana Department of Revenue announced Wednesday it will no longer mail state income tax forms to Hoosier households.

“Looking at that from a cost-effective standpoint we’re not going to do that,” said Stephanie McFarland, revenue department spokeswoman.
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Data on Indiana corporations now are as close as your Internet-enabled telephone.

Secretary of State Todd Rokita’s Business Services Division has launched a new mobile application that allows users to look up a corporation’s address, registered agent and officers, and view an up-to-date list of documents filed by the company.
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Gov. Mitch Daniels is ready to sign a statewide smoking ban into law if the General Assembly sends it to him.

“I would definitely sign one and there seems to be growing momentum for one,” Daniels said.

State Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary, plans again to sponsor legislation in January that would prohibit indoor smoking statewide.
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Gov. Mitch Daniels fields questions from students Thursday during his visit to the Valparaiso University School of Law. (Photograph by The Times.)

Gov. Mitch Daniels’ plan for Indiana’s economy has always been to make the state the best “sandbox” for business to play in while increasing the income of everyday Hoosiers.

In the last six years, Daniels has signed into law simplified business sales taxes, easy to understand unemployment and worker compensation insurance programs, and incentives to lure the advanced manufacturing of the future to Indiana today.

It’s beginning to really pay off, Daniels said recently, pointing to more than 25,000 new or retained jobs in Indiana in the past 18 months, even as job growth elsewhere in the United States has stalled.
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U.S. Steel Corp. in Gary is planning to develop four plants to produce Cokonyx, a carbon alloy that reduces emissions in the production of coke. (Photograph by The Times.)

Steady job growth in manufacturing over the past year bodes well for Indiana, the state with the highest percentage of manufacturing jobs in the United States.

Between January and June, Indiana added 16,700 manufacturing employees, a 3.9 percent increase, and more than 10 percent of the 136,000 total manufacturing jobs added in the country since December 2009. More than 19 percent of Hoosiers work in manufacturing.

While many of the new Indiana manufacturing jobs added this year were located outside of Northwest Indiana, region workers stand to benefit from several major manufacturing projects now moving forward close to home.
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Secretary of State Todd Rokita is warning Hoosiers not to be taken in by promises of fast, significant gains in the value of their investments. It could be a scam.

Rokita, a Munster native, has published a list of this year’s 10 most common fraudulent traps investors should avoid when trying to jump start their portfolios or recoup earnings lost during the national recession.

Among the scams Rokita lists is the “Off the Books” scheme where a broker may offer its client an investment on the side instead of through his or her company. These “off books” investments may not only be illegal, but they can also be especially risky without the oversight and supervision of the broker’s employer, Rokita said.
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Northwest Indiana may someday become a center of wind energy production, but without 100-meter tall turbines looming over houses.

Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman said Wednesday that the Indiana Office of Energy Development and state environment and natural resources officials are working to figure out how to site wind turbines in Indiana’s portion of Lake Michigan.

“We have the potential to develop several thousand megawatts of on-shore or off-shore wind, and that’s thanks to our unique position as a land-locked state bordering a Great Lake,” Skillman told more than 500 participants at the third annual WIndiana wind power conference in Indianapolis.
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Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels talks with guests Wednesday at the signing of a memorandum of understanding committing both states to plan and develop the expressway during a ceremony Wednesday at the Lansing Municipal Airport. (Photograph by Natalie Battaglia/The Times.)

People in Utah, Colorado and Ohio are surprisingly interested in the partisan divide of the Indiana House of Representatives.

Since the beginning of this year, residents of those three states have donated $62,250 to Gov. Mitch Daniels’ Aiming Higher political action committee, a fund with the goal of winning control of the Indiana House for Republicans.

And they’re not alone.

An analysis by The Times of Aiming Higher donations found that non-Indiana residents from 21 different states have donated $169,650 to the Republican governor’s political action committee this year, nearly 26 percent of the $664,995 raised in total. Read the rest of this entry »