State budget wrangling picks up
State lawmakers have two steps left to take today before the clock will start on bipartisan, legislative budget negotiations. The Republican-led Senate is expected to pass its two-year, $28.5 billion budget. Then, the Democratic-controlled House will meet late this afternoon to dissent from that budget. That will send top negotiators in both chambers into joint conference committee discussions, where they’ll try to bridge their differences and broker a deal that can pass both the House and the Senate and also meet Gov. Mitch Daniels’ muster.
Former Ind. lieutenant governor dies at 89
Richard O. Ristine, a Republican who served one term as Indiana’s lieutenant governor and cast the deciding vote that established the state’s sales tax in 1963, has died at age 89. Ristine died Saturday at his home in Leland, Mich., after a brief illness, U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., said Monday in a statement that called Ristine “a remarkable Indiana leader.” “The state of Indiana and his many friends will miss him very much, while appreciating his great character and remarkable life of service,” Lugar said in his statement. Ristine earned a law degree from Columbia University before serving with the Army Air Corps during World War II in the Philippines and Japan.
State’s casinos battling lower revenue
When Debra Butler relocated her salon in January to be closer to Hoosier Park, business grew so quickly that she doubled her staff and began laying out plans to expand. But now, with talk of the horse-track casino’s financial struggles and even a possible bankruptcy, Butler and other business owners in Anderson are worried — especially because the city already has endured a long string of factory closings. “There’d be a lot of job loss that trickles down,” Butler said. “I don’t think Anderson can afford to lose anything job-wise.” While Hoosier Park’s struggles are more severe than most, other Indiana casinos have hit a downturn, with more than half of the state’s 13 riverboats and horse-track casinos having sought financial help or struggling to emerge from — or avoid — bankruptcy.
