“Right Jab And Middle Jab And Left Jab†MAY 16, 2020
“Right Jab And Middle Jab And Left Jab†MAY 16, 2020
“Right Jab And Middle Jab And Left Jabâ€Â was created because we have a couple of commenters that post on a daily basis either in our “IS IT TRUE†or “Readers Forum†columns concerning National or International issues.
The majority of our “IS IT TRUE†columns are about local or state issues, so we have decided to give our more opinionated readers exclusive access to our newly created “LEFT JAB and Middle Jab and RIGHT JAB† column. They now have this post to exclusively discuss national or world issues that they feel passionate about.
We shall be posting the “LEFT JAB†AND “MIDDLE JAB†AND “RIGHT JABâ€Â several times a week.  Oh, “LEFT JAB†is a liberal view, “MIDDLE JAB†is the libertarian view and the “RIGHT JAB is representative of the more conservative views. Also, any reader who would like to react to the written comments in this column is free to do so6
Trump Administration Provides Assistance for Community Revitalization, Local Food Economy
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), along with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service, is announcing assistance to help 16 communities boost economic opportunities for their local farmers, while promoting clean air, safe water, open space, and healthy food choices.
“The Trump Administration is committed to helping communities develop and strengthen their local food economy by investing in opportunity zones,â€Â said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. “Support for local food initiatives will improve access to fresh foods, support our local farmers, and grow new businesses, all of which lead to happier and healthier communities.â€
Nearly all communities selected include Opportunity Zones, in support of President Trump’s Executive Order 13853. The assistance is provided through the Local Foods, Local Places (LFLP) program, a federal initiative that helps communities reinvest in existing neighborhoods and improve quality of life through the sustainable development of their local food economy.
The selected communities will get access to a team of federal, state, and regional agricultural, environmental, public health, architectural and economic development experts to help develop an action plan, set goals, and identify local assets that can support the local food economy and contribute to downtown and neighborhood revitalization.
The EPA will be flexible in working with these communities on next steps for the projects planned below, as necessary, considering that many communities are still dealing with issues related to COVID-19. Recipients and project summaries include the following:
Fayette, Alabama
The County Extension Office will work with residents to strategically relocate its local farmers market to an underutilized space downtown to increase sense of place and local food options.
Redding, California
Healthy Shasta plans to strengthen the local food system to support a more vibrant, walkable downtown, and ensure downtown residents can access affordable, fresh, and healthy food.
Springfield, Illinois
The city will explore options that will support local food entrepreneurs in need of a commercial kitchen and training center as part of broader city efforts to revitalize the historic downtown.
Evansville, Indiana
The city will transition an abandoned food bank facility, located on a Superfund site, into a multi-use food center to address food insecurity and provide resources for local food entrepreneurs.
North Lake Charles, Louisiana
The Southwest Louisiana Center for Health Services is launching a community food policy workgroup to build out a vision for the local food system to include community gardens, outreach to schools, pocket gardens, and education on the value of planting fruit trees, especially in unused land in blighted neighborhoods.
Opelousas, Louisiana
The Opelousas General Health System Foundation will build upon a recent brownfields assessment of downtown to explore how a cultural tourism hub can bridge gaps between revitalization and healthier cultural eating alternatives.
Pelican Rapids, Minnesota
The West Central Initiative is exploring options to support downtown revitalization by growing food-related assets to create an international marketplace destination reflecting and supporting the town’s ethnically diverse population.
Vicksburg, Mississippi
Shape Up Mississippi wants to create an educational and economical food hub combining a farmers market, community garden, demonstration kitchen, educational center and the Catfish Row Museum that explains the local culture and its relationship to the Mississippi River.
Kansas City, Missouri
The Mattie Rhodes Center will create a viable food hub and community gardens on a cleaned-up brownfields federal facility site located in an urban food desert that is home to a large immigrant refugee population.
York, Nebraska
The County Development Corporation plans to engage the community in re-envisioning revitalization plan for green space surrounding downtown farmers market and leverage city well-field to supplement market produce supply to improve soil health and city drinking water supply.
Poughkeepsie, New York
Hudson River Housing, Inc. aims to support downtown food entrepreneurs in a former factory by adding food production and processing capacity to already existing affordable housing and commercial kitchen.
Salisbury, North Carolina
The city will focus on strengthening small retail business activity and downtown revitalization by exploring co-operative opportunities beyond a seasonal, outdoor farmers market model.
Cottage Grove, Oregon
This historic timber and mining town wants to better connect and coalesce several food and placemaking efforts including downtown revitalization, complete streets restoration, food hub support to the local immigrant community, and restoration of a former armory into a community center and commercial kitchen.
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
The Redevelopment Authority is pursuing a recommendation from EPA’s brownfields program to introduce a food accelerator on a former brownfield site to educate the community on urban food solutions, provide culinary job training, and better connect stores and restaurants to local growers.
Johnstown, Pennsylvania
Vision Together 2025 seeks to improve the post-steel manufacturing economy of the city by repurposing the historic downtown train station into a healthy food and transit hub that includes a farmers market and culinary institute; initiating an urban agriculture pilot on vacant downtown lot; and proceeding with an “Iron-to-Arts†corridor trail system and complete streets plan to better connect downtown assets.
Woonsocket, Rhode Island
NeighborWorks Blackstone River Valley wants to leverage improvements initiated through a Main Street Livability Plan by redeveloping defunct mill sites undergoing brownfields clean up to establish downtown as a vibrant food hub and center for food entrepreneurs.
For more information on LFLP:Â https://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/local-foods-local-places
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AG Curtis Hill: Indianapolis order ‘amounts to unconstitutional and unlawful religious discrimination’
Restrictions on worship services recently issued by the City of Indianapolis veer into “unconstitutional and unlawful religious discrimination,†Attorney General Curtis Hill said today.
Issued as part of the city’s effort to reopen amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Public Health Order 9-2020 limits the size of gatherings at Indianapolis places of worship to 25 people. It does not, however, impose this same restriction on other essential or even non-essential businesses. Places of worship are categorized as essential businesses.
“The Supreme Court of the United States has made clear that the First Amendment prohibits the government from singling out people for disfavored treatment because they are religious,†Attorney General Hill wrote in a letter to Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett and Marion County Public Health Department Director Dr. Virginia Caine.
Churches, synagogues and other places of worship must be treated the same as non-religious entities, he wrote.
“During this difficult time, it is reasonable to expect all Hoosiers to make sacrifices to prevent the spread of the easily transferred COVID-19 virus, including by tolerating restrictions on gatherings and assemblies,†Attorney General Hill wrote. “Yet government officials must continue to respect the core civil right to be free from unlawful discrimination, including with respect to the free exercise of religion.
The letter is attached.
AG Hill, disciplinary commission differ on whether suspension means Hill vacates office
A decision from the Indiana Supreme Court on whether Attorney General Curtis Hill will “vacate†his office during his impending suspension likely will not be handed down until next week, creating uncertainty over whether the Office of the Attorney General will have a recognized leader come Monday.
Hill on Monday will begin a 30-day suspension for violations of Professional Conduct Rules 8.4(b) and (d) related to allegations that he drunkenly groped four women. He will be automatically reinstated June 18.
Hill announced that his chief deputy, Aaron Negangard, will take over the legal operations of the Office of the Attorney General during that time. But Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb moved to intervene in Hill’s discipline case, asking the Supreme Court for clarity on whether Hill’s suspension equates to a vacancy in the office that Holcomb would fill.
On an order of the high court, both Hill and the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission responded to the governor’s request Friday, taking different stances.
The commission did not object to the motion to intervene but declined to opine on the “statutory selection process for vacancies in the Attorney General’s office.†But the commission also seized on Hill’s decision to give Negangard authority over OAG’s legal operations, implying that Hill’s suspension will disqualify him from more than just his office’s legal functions.
“By rule, Respondent’s suspension prohibits him from maintaining a presence in or occupying an office in which the practice of law is conducted while he is suspended,†the commission wrote, citing to Indiana Admission and Discipline Rule 23(26)(b)(1). “Thus, Respondent must completely disengage from any control or authority pertaining to the Office of Attorney General.
“… Maintaining any presence including retaining any control or authority over an office in which the practice of law is conducted violaties Admis. Disc.R. 23(26)(b)(1),†the commission continued. “… In addition, the Respondent may not ‘occupy an office’ where the practice of law is conducted, which may be read as pertaining not only to a physical location but also to the ‘Office’ of Attorney General.â€
Hill, however, argued his suspension will be only a “short interruption†of his “ability to carry out some (but not all) statutory responsibilities.â€
“In this case, the Respondent’s suspension affects his ability to personally practice law, but the attorney general’s duties include many more functions than acting as the state’s legal representative,†attorney Don Lundberg, former head of the Disciplinary Commission, wrote on Hill’s behalf. He gave the statutory examples of administering the Office of the Attorney General, administering collection and distribution of unclaimed property and investigating human trafficking.
Story Continues Below
The key statute at issue in the dispute over Hill’s eligibility to remain in office is Indiana Code § 4-6-1-3, which holds that “(t)he attorney general shall be a citizen of and duly licensed to practice law in Indiana.â€
In his opposition to the governor’s motion, Hill seized on the difference between being “licensed†to practice law and being “authorized†to do so.
“It is however, noteworthy that IND. CODE 4-6-1-3 establishes due licensure as a qualification for the attorney general; but it does not require that the attorney general be duly authorized to practice law. This should not be shocking,†Lundberg wrote. “Given the nature of his statutory responsibilities, training in the law and licensure to practice law is a worthy qualification. But authority to actually practice law is not necessary because, unless the attorney general chooses to personally give legal advice to the State or its agencies or actively represent them in court, he has duly licensed and authorized deputy attorneys general to actually render legal representation to the State and its agencies.
“… Because the Respondent will remain duly licensed to practice law during the thirty days of his suspension, he will not have lost a qualification for holding his public office, so the Governor’s Motion should be denied since he is not entitled to the relief he seeks in the Motion.â€
Hill also argued that a “vacancy†occurs in office only when the officeholder dies, resigns or in “other circumstances that cause the officeholder to be unable to complete the term of office.†Here, he noted, he will be able to return to office 30 days after May 18.
Additionally, Hill said Holcomb’s motion is not proper in an attorney discipline case, where the rules of pleading and practice do not apply.
A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court said Indiana’s five justices will “carefully consider†the motion and responses and likely hand down their decision next week.
Indiana Lawyer has reached out to Holcomb’s office for comment on whether the governor will recognize Negangard as the office’s leader if the Supreme Court has not ruled by Monday
HOT JOBS IN EVANSVILLE
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Responsive employerLopez, Krizan named Academic All-District IV
University of Southern Indiana senior outfielder Manny Lopez (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) and junior outfielder Bryce Krizan (Mt. Vernon, Indiana) were named Academic All-District IV by the College Sports Information Directors of America. The awards are the first for Lopez and Krizan.
To be eligible for the CoSIDA Academic All-District, the student athlete must be a starter or important reserve with legitimate athletic credentials and at least a 3.3 cumulative grade point average (4.0 scale). They must have reached a sophomore athletic and academic standing at the institution and must have completed at least one full academic year at the institution.
Due to the cancellation of the 2020 spring season, nominations were based upon career athletic statistics.
Lopez, a mechanical engineering major, is a career .324 hitter with 11 home runs, 20 doubles, five triples, 56 RBI, and 53 runs scored. The 2019 second-team All-GLVC and Academic All-GLVC honoree was second on the team in 2020 before the season was suspended (14 games) with a .308 average, 12 RBI, and two home runs.
Krizan, a computer information systems major, has a three-year .289 career average with 75 stolen bases, 115 run scored, 14 doubles, three triples, and one home run. The 75 stolen bases ranks fourth all-time at USI.
Prior to the suspension of the 2020 campaign, Krizan was batting .200 with eight runs scored, two doubles, a triple, and a home run.
JUST IN: Indiana Gaming Commission To Vote On Terre Haute Casino License
Laying It On The Table: Indiana Gaming Commission To Vote On Terre Haute Casino LicenseIBJ-THE RUNDOWN by LINDSEY ERDODY |
| After a months-long delay, the Indiana Gaming Commission is poised to move ahead with awarding the Vigo County casino license later today.
The commission initially planned to meet Feb. 7 to consider awarding a casino license to a subsidiary of Spectacle Entertainment, which is owned in part by former executives of Centaur Gaming. But that all changed once a federal plea deal became public on Jan. 23 allegings that Centaur and John Keeler, then-vice president and general counsel for the company, were involved in funneling thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to an Indiana congressional candidate in 2015. So what has changed to make the commission OK with voting on the license? Keeler and former Centaur Chairman and CEO Rod Ratcliff, who has the same role as Spectacle, are no longer investors in the subsidiary that is pursuing the Terre Haute casino. But, it’s important to note, they are still with Spectacle Entertainment. The commission meets at 11 a.m. Watch IBJ.com for updates after the meeting. |
