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SOUTHWESTERN INDIANA LEGISLATORS RULE!

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SOUTHWESTERN INDIANA LEGISLATORS RULE!
by Gail Reicken, City-County Statehouse Editor
More women will represent Hoosiers at the Statehouse than ever before. As of last Tuesday’s Organization Day, 35 women now serve in the House and Senate.
Southwestern Indiana has the good fortune to have two women in critical leadership roles in the House of Representatives. Rep. Wendy McNamara will be the Chairperson of Courts and Criminal Code Committee and Rep Holli Sullivan will be Chairperson of the Roads and Transportation Committee.
With their friend Rep Ron Bacon, who will also chair an important committee, Interstate, and International Cooperation Committee, we should see more progress on issues that concern us in our corner of the State.
I especially would like to see some innovation past the Governor’s Next Level Roads initiative that he says is now fully-funded. Maintenance is critical, which highlights his 20-year infrastructure plan, and  I agree.
But, there are other critical infrastructure issues like addressing waterway transportation issues for commercial traffic that would benefit the economy in southwestern Indiana.
Our legislators should advocate for a port at the crossing of the new 69 bridge to complement the port in Mt Vernon. They should advocate with the new US Senator Mike Braun for a funded program of repairs and maintenance to the locks on dams on the inland waterways.
Congratulations to Indiana State Representatives Holli Sullivan, Wendy McNamara and Ron Bacon for being appointed to a prestigious Indiana State House of Representatives leadership positions!

Evansville Man Receives Four Years After Pleading Guilty to Lesser Crime

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Evansville Man Receives Four Years After Pleading Guilty to Lesser Crime

DECEMBER 3rd, 2018 MITCH ANGLE EVANSVILLE, INDIANA

An Evansville man charged with murder pleads guilty to a lesser crime.

Romano Wright was charged with murder in connection to the December 2017 death of Michael Pardee.

Under a plea bargain, Wright agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit robbery. In return, he was sentenced to four year years in prison and the murder charge, as well as several other charges against him, were dropped.

Wright was also sentenced for three years for an unrelated burglary conviction.

The other man involved in the murder, Donavon Thomas, was previously sentenced to 65 years in prison for his role in the crime.

 

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Freedom From Religion Foundation Calls Attention To Team Prayer

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Freedom From Religion Foundation Calls Attention To Team Prayer

DECEMBER 3RD, 2018 MACLEOD HAGEMAN GIBSON COUNTY, INDIANA

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is calling attention to Indiana public high school football coaches praying with students, violating their First Amendment rights in the process.

A concerned community member in the South Gibson School Corporation contacted FFRF to report that high school personnel prayed with student-athletes following a football game at Gibson Southern High School.

A photograph posted on social media shows coaching staff for both teams, as well as other adults, bowing their heads in prayer and placing their hands on students, along with the caption, “This is how two of the best football programs in southern Indiana complete a game … the power of prayer — at Gibson County, Indiana.”

The Supreme Court has continually struck down school-sponsored prayer because it constitutes a government endorsement of religion.

Right now, Gibson Southern School Corporation administrators say they’re reviewing the letter.

If you’d like to see the full press release, you can click here.

UE Winter Commencement Set for Thursday, December 13

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The University of Evansville’s Winter Commencement ceremony is set for Thursday, December 13. The event begins at 3:00 p.m. in Meeks Family Fieldhouse, Carson Center, on UE’s campus. The ceremony will include the announcement of the recipient of the 2018 Exemplary Teacher Award, given by the University to an exceptional member of the faculty in acknowledgment of his or her teaching excellence. 

Dave Dwyer, chair of UE’s Department of Mathematics, will be this year’s Winter Commencement speaker. Dwyer was given the Eykamp Prize during UE’s May 2018 commencement ceremony. This annual award, made possible by the generosity the Eykamp Family, recognizes UE faculty who have displayed extraordinary service to the University. 

Dwyer has received the Dean’s Teaching Award, the Alumni Association’s Outstanding Teacher Award, and the Berger Award for Scholarship. He has been a member, chair, and co-chair of numerous campus committees. Most recently he was a faculty representative on the Presidential Search Committee. Notably, Dwyer spearheaded the Moonshot group of arts and sciences faculty who have put additional effort into assisting the Office of Admission. He secured two NSF grants totaling over $700,000, which funded the development of a textbook that is currently used in the University’s calculus sequence. Dwyer was instrumental in the decision to create a statistics and data science program, and sought grants to fund its development. 

For those who cannot attend Winter Commencement in person, a video of the ceremony will stream live at www.evansville.edu/live.

CENTERPOINT ENERGY ANNOUNCES ITS SENIOR LEADERSHIP TEAM

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CENTERPOINT ENERGY ANNOUNCES ITS SENIOR LEADERSHIP TEAM

This morning CenterPoint Energy (CNP) announced its senior leadership team that will take effect when CNP completes its merger with Vectren.  Although Vectren and CNP will continue to operate separately until the merger officially closes, today’s news is a critical step in the integration planning process that has been underway since earlier this summer.

As we reported when we announced the merger in April, two of the eight members of the senior leadership team reporting to CenterPoint Energy CEO Scott Prochaska will be based in Evansville, Ind.  These two include Scott Doyle, currently CenterPoint Energy’s senior vice president of natural gas distribution, who will lead the combined company’s natural gas utility business. He will be responsible for the company’s 8-state, 4.5 million-customer natural gas operations utility footprint, natural gas supply, natural gas engineering, and operations support. In addition, Doyle will oversee the enterprise customer organization, including utility sales and marketing.  The second Evansville-based executive is Lynnae Wilson, Vectren ’s current vice president of energy delivery, who will lead the Indiana electric business for CNP. In this role, she will be responsible for power generation operations and construction, transmission and distribution operations, electric engineering, Midwest Independent System Operator (MISO) and wholesale power marketing, key account management, and integrated resource planning. Wilson has been with Vectren since 2003. Prior to being named a Vectren vice president, Wilson served as director of engineering and systems operations and as the director of Vectren’s A.B. Brown electric generating plant, among other key utility operations roles. You can read more about CNP’s senior leadership team in the press release issued today by clicking here.

Please note that the leaders of the Vectren subsidiaries – Energy Systems Group, Miller Pipeline, and Minnesota Limited – will report to Joe Vortherms, the competitive businesses executive referenced in the news release.  The headquarters locations for these three subsidiaries are Newburgh, Ind., Indianapolis, Ind., and Minneapolis, MN respectively, and will remain the same after the merger with CNP.

As a reminder, we expect the merger transaction to close in the first quarter of 2019. We have completed nearly all the milestones to approve the merger. Prior to the transaction closing, Vectren’s existing senior executive team continues to lead operations at Vectren.

Integration teams comprised of Vectren and CNP personnel are busy preparing for Day 1 of the merger to ensure the newly combined company transitions well and continues to provide safe, reliable energy delivery for our customers. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns with today’s announcement. We will keep you informed as this integration planning process is finalized and the transaction closes.  We will be scheduling time in the near future for members of the leadership team to be introduced.

 

Site Review Committee Hears LST Visitor Center Plans

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Site Review Committee Hears LST Visitor Center Plans

DECEMBER 3RD, 2018 TYRONE MORRIS EVANSVILLE, INDIANA

Plans continue to move forward for a new home for an Evansville landmark. Monday architects working on the LST 325 move presented their updated project to the Site Review Committee.

They still plan to move the ship downriver where the Tropicana Riverboat Casino used to be located and build a new visitor’s center leading out to the ship.

Not everyone at the committee hearing signed off on the plans.

Representatives from the Water and Sewer Department want to go over the proposed visitor center in more detail before giving their final approval.

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Eagles Host Lindenwood-Belleville Tonight

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University Of Southern Indiana Women’s Basketball To Hosts NAIA Opponent Lindenwood University-Belleville 

USI (7-1), which has won seven straight games, is led by senior center Kacy Eschweiler (St. Charles, Missouri) and senior guard Alex Davidson (Salem, Indiana). Eschweiler is averaging a team-best 13.8 points and 8.6 rebounds per game, while Davidson is chipping in 13.1 points per game and a team-high 4.4 assists per appearance.

Sophomore forward Imani Guy (Columbus, Indiana) and sophomore guard Emma DeHart (Indianapolis, Indiana) is averaging 10.0 and 9.8 points per game, respectively, while junior guard Ashley Johnson (Louisville, Kentucky) is chipping in 8.9 and 8.1 points per game, respectively.

Tuesday’s meeting is the first-ever matchup between the Eagles and Lynx in women’s basketball. The game will be broadcast on 95.7 The Spin and on the GLVC Sports Network, while live stats, audio, and video links are available at GoUSIEagles.com.

USI Women’s Basketball Notes
• Eagles open GLVC play with the wire-to-wire win over Knights. USI Women’s Basketball jumped out to a 10-0 lead and never trailed as it earned a 77-70 win over Bellarmine in its GLVC-opener Saturday night. Senior center Kacy Eschweiler and sophomore guard Kennedy Williams led the Eagles with 13 points apiece, while senior guard Alex Davidson and junior guard Ashley Johnson added 12 and 11 points, respectively.

• Johnson comes up big. Johnson scored nine of her 11 points against Bellarmine in the second half and was instrumental in a two of the three runs that defined the game. She had a team-high five points in USI’s 23-10 run that turned a 29-28 lead late in the first half into a commanding 52-38 advantage with four minutes to play in the third quarter. She scored four points in USI’s game-clinching 7-1 run that turned a 66-64 edge into a 73-65 cushion with less than a minute to go in the game.

• Stein notches another milestone. Head Coach Rick Stein picked up his 200th GLVC win with the Eagles victory over Bellarmine. USI’s win over Lincoln Memorial earlier this year marked the 500th time Stein has been on the bench for an Eagle victory. Stein was an assistant coach under USI Hall of Famer and current Bellarmine Coach Chancellor Dugan for 159 wins from 1991-99 and has amassed a program-record 346 victories in his 19-plus seasons at the top of the USI Women’s Basketball program.

• Eagles in midst of second-longest home win streak. The Eagles extended their home winning streak to 27 games with their win over Bellarmine Saturday. It is USI’s second-longest home winning streak in program history. USI won 33 straight games at the PAC from 1996-98 and 23 straight home games from 2000-02.

• 20-point efforts. Guy’s career-high 25 points in USI’s win over Michigan Tech marked a season-high for the Eagles and made her the fourth different Eagle to notch a 20-point game this season. USI has had eight different players reach double-figures in the scoring column this year and six different players reach double-figures multiple times.

• Up next. USI hosts NAIA foe Lindenwood-Belleville Tuesday evening in their final game of a seven-game homestand.

• About Lindenwood-Belleville. The Lynx are 3-7 following a split in conference play last weekend. Junior guard Brianna Mueller is averaging 19.5 points per game to lead the Lynx, while junior guard Hailey Erdman is chipping in 12.1 points and 3.7 assists per contest.

• Around the corner. Good news: after a busy November-early December, the Eagles will get some rest with just two remaining games in the final month of 2018. Bad news: Those two games are against Central Missouri and Ashland. Central Missouri upset Ashland in last year’s NCAA II National Championship game, while Ashland, currently ranked No. 1 in the nation, has not lost a regular-season game since February 4, 2016.

• GLVC Tournament Points Rating System. After one week of conference action, the GLVC Tournament Points Rating System (GTPRS) has the Eagles in a tie for fourth with Drury and Lewis. The GTPRS will determine the participants and seeding of the GLVC Tournament in 2018-19.

• Record book watch. One player is currently in USI’s record books:
–Kacy Eschweiler is 11th in blocks (63), 27th in rebounding (395) and is 41st in scoring (610).

• Magic Mark: 75 points. The Eagles are 405-75 (.844) all-time when scoring at least 75 points. USI is 278-26 (.915) since 1996-97 when reaching the 75-point plateau.

High Court Rejects Request To Reinstate Murderer Baer’s Death Sentence

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Il for www.theindianalawyer.com

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a request by Indiana’s attorney general’s office to reinstate the death sentence of a man convicted of killing a central Indiana woman and her 4-year-old daughter.

Monday’s decision leaves in place a federal appeals court ruling that threw out Frederick Baer’s death sentence because he had ineffective legal counsel. He’ll now be resentenced by an Indiana court.

The 47-year-old Indianapolis man was convicted in the 2004 slayings of 26-year-old Cory Clark and her daughter Jenna at their rural Madison County home about 25 miles northeast of Indianapolis.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago threw out Baer’s death sentence in January.

Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill had asked the full federal appeals court in February to reinstate Baer’s death sentence.

CHRISTMAS ASSEMBLY LINE LAYOFFS

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Gov. Holcomb Public Schedule for December 4

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Indiana Gov. Eric J. Holcomb will join leaders from The Last Mile and Google.org for a second announcement this year about learning in prison.

 

Tuesday, December 4: The Last Mile Announcement

WHO:                          Gov. Holcomb
Indiana Department of Correction Commissioner Rob Carter

Chris Redlitz, Co-founder of The Last Mile
Beverly Parenti, Executive Director of The Last Mile
MC Hammer, Board Member of The Last Mile
Sway Calloway, Board Member of The Last Mile
Justin Steele, Head of Americas for Google.org
Maab Ibrahim, Criminal Justice Lead for Google.org

Program graduates

 

WHAT:                        The governor will give remarks.

 

WHEN:                        11 a.m., Tuesday, December 4

 

WHERE:                      Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility

9310 S. S.R. 67

Pendleton, IN 46064

 

LIVESTREAM:            https://livestream.com/Indiana/events/8470606

PLEASE NOTE: This event is taking place in a secure facility. Media must arrive at least 30 minutes prior to the event and present a state-issued ID. Details on approved items for the event can be found at: http://www.in.gov/idoc/3515.htm.

 

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