Otters Swept Away In Doubleheader By CornBelters
The Evansville Otters dropped both games of a doubleheader against the Normal CornBelters on Sunday at The Corn Crib by final scores of 6-5 and 5-0 as Normal completed the three-game sweep of Evansville over the weekend.
In the first game of the doubleheader, Ryan Long wasted no time to open up the scoring as he hit a two-run homer in the first inning to put the Otters up 2-0.
David Cronin made it a 3-0 game with an RBI single in the second.
Daniel Spingola brought home the fourth run of the game for the Otters with a sacrifice fly in the third.
Normal got back into the game in the bottom of the fourth. Andrew Godbold brought home a run with an RBI single and Nick Cain made it a 4-2 game with an RBI groundout. A balk from Tyler Vail allowed a run to score to make it a 4-3 game.
Evansville added a run in the top of the fifth on a Toby Thomas RBI double.
Normal tied the game on a Godbold two-run homer in the bottom of the sixth.
Derrick Loveless ended the game in the bottom of the seventh with a walk-off RBI single to right to give Normal the 6-5 victory.
Tyler Beardsley is hung with the loss for the second straight game after allowing three runs in 1.1 innings.
Anthony Herrera gets the win after tossing a clean seventh frame.
Otters starter Vail pitched well but does not factor into the decision. Vail threw five innings, allowing three runs while striking out five.
Zack Kirby also receives a no-decision after starting for the CornBelters and giving up five runs, four earned, in 4.2 innings.
The Otters were then shutout in the second game of the doubleheader as they fell 5-0 to Normal.
The second game of the twin bill stayed scoreless for the first four innings before Normal broke through in the fifth.
James Davison Jr. plated the first run of the game on a ground rule double. Justin Fletcher then singled to left, and an error form Hunter Cullen in left allowed Davison Jr. to score from second base. Santiago Chirino then scored Fletcher with an RBI double. Andrew Godbold capped off the inning with a two-run double to make it 5-0 Normal.
Jonathan De Marte tossed the final two frames in scoreless fashion to seal the 5-0 win for Normal.
Jack Landwehr gets the win for Normal after shutting out the Otters for five innings and limiting Evansville to just two hits.
Randy Wynne picks up his sixth loss of the season for the Otters. Wynne went 4.1 innings and allowed five runs on 10 hits while striking out three.
The Otters will now return to Bosse Field for a six-game homestand July 17-22, featuring $2 Tuesday, Deaconess and Orthopedic Associates Night, German Heritage Night and Thirsty Thursday, Kyndle Night, Princess Night and Fellowship Day and Family Fun Day.
Sevier Gives Cox Tie For Trainer Lead After 0 For 13 Start
“READERS FORUM” JULY 16, 2016
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Pence Family Gas Stations Left Costly Environmental Legacy
IL for www.theindianalawyer.com
Vice President Mike Pence turns nostalgic when he talks about growing up in small-town Columbus, Indiana, where his father helped build a Midwestern empire of more than 200 gas stations that provided an upbringing on the “front row of the American dream.â€
The collapse of Kiel Bros. Oil Co. in 2004 was widely publicized. Less known is that the state of Indiana — and, to a smaller extent, Kentucky and Illinois — are still on the hook for millions of dollars to clean up more than 85 contaminated sites across the three states, including underground tanks that leaked toxic chemicals into the soil, streams, and wells.
Indiana alone has spent at least $21 million on the cleanup thus far, or an average of about $500,000 per site, according to an analysis of records by The Associated Press. And the work is nowhere near complete.
The federal government, meanwhile, plans to clean up a plume of cancer-causing solvent discovered beneath a former Kiel Bros. station that threatens drinking water near the Pence family’s hometown.
To assess the pollution costs, the AP reviewed thousands of pages of court documents, tax statements, business filings and federal financial disclosures, as well as federal and state environmental records for Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois. The total financial impact isn’t clear because Indiana officials have yet to release cost figures for 12 contaminated areas. Other records are incomplete, redacted or missing.
The public cleanup of more than 25 former Kiel Bros. sites in Kentucky and Illinois — where officials have done a better job keeping costs down — has been much less expensive, totaling about $1.7 million, according to an analysis of records obtained under each state’s public records law.
Kiel Bros. has paid for only a fraction of the overall effort. In court documents, the company cited payment of $8.8 million in indemnity and defense costs, but also noted that $5 million of that amount came from the states.
Indiana’s Department of Environmental Management, which regulates gas stations, did not respond to a detailed list of questions from the AP. Spokesman Ryan Clem said the agency is working to provide records requested under Indiana’s public records law that could shed some light on how much former Kiel Bros. sites have cost the state.
Pence spokeswoman Alyssa Farah called the findings “a years-old issue†that the vice president has addressed before. She did not elaborate.
In a statement, Pence’s older brother Greg Pence — who was president of Kiel Bros. when it went bankrupt and is now running for Congress as a Republican — distanced himself from the cleanup costs.
“Greg Pence has had nothing to do with Kiel Bros since 2004. This is another attempt by the liberal media to rehash old, baseless attacks,†campaign spokeswoman Molly Gillaspie said.
The fact that the company stuck taxpayers with the lion’s share of the cleanup bill rankles some observers, especially in light of the family’s reputation as budget hawks critical of government spending.
The Pence family, especially Greg Pence, has “some answering in public†to do, said A. James Barnes, an environmental law professor who served in high-ranking posts at the Environmental Protection Agency under President Ronald Reagan.
Mike Pence, then a third-year congressman, lost more than $600,000 when the company went under. He later became Indiana governor and now has assets worth between $532,000 and $1.13 million. Greg Pence, who is seeking the vice president’s old congressional seat, has total assets worth $5.7 to $26 million.
Nearly a decade after going under, Kiel Bros. sites still ranked among the top 10 recipients of state money for such cleanups in Indiana in 2013, the last year for which the petroleum industry has reliable spending data for the company. That was out of more than 230 companies seeking cleanup money that year, including major gas station chains with a substantially larger presence in the state.
Founded as an oil distributor by businessman Carl Kiel in 1960, the company expanded into the gas station business. Pence’s father, Edward, joined in the early years and, by the mid-1970s, rose to corporate vice president.
Mike Pence says he worked for the business — which mostly operated under the name Tobacco Road — starting at age 14. But it was his brother who took over and eventually became president after Edward Pence’s 1988 death.
By the early 2000s, Kiel Bros. was swimming in debt as industry consolidation and low gas prices stretched profit margins to the brink. The business racked up environmental fines and closed stores. In June 2004, Greg Pence resigned as the company filed for bankruptcy.
“The oil and gas industry changed rapidly in the 1990s and early 2000s, and many small, independent companies like Kiel Brothers were not able to survive,†said Gillaspie, Greg Pence’s spokeswoman.
Not long after, Pence also resigned from the board of a local bank that loaned $16 million to the company. He and Ted Kiel, whose father founded the company, had personally guaranteed the loans, promising to repay outstanding debts with their own assets, records show.
Ted Kiel settled. The bank fought Greg Pence in court and obtained a $3.8 million judgment, which he later settled for pennies on the dollar, according to records and interviews.
Gillaspie said Pence reached a “satisfactory settlement agreement with all parties.â€
Many of the gas stations were sold off and are still operating. But some sites were abandoned, including a graffiti-covered storage tank facility that once towered over an Indianapolis neighborhood. Nearby residents cheered last December as a crew tore down the tank, which was sold by the company for $10 in 2005 and has been an eyesore ever since. The cleanup will cost an estimated $260,000, according to the city.
Elsewhere in the city, business continues as usual at a gas station that has been in a continuous state of cleanup since 1990. Pictures were taken in 1992 show standing pools of black sludge where two underground storage tanks were removed. At the time, Greg Pence and state environmental regulators pledged to work together on the cleanup. Since then, it has become one of the most expensive Kiel Bros. sites, costing the state $1.7 million.
In the immediate aftermath of the bankruptcy, the state sought about $8.4 million from the company for cleanup and fines. After a new Republican governor, Mitch Daniels assumed office in 2005, the state dropped that claim, which had been filed under Daniels’ Democratic predecessor, Gov. Joe Kernan.
The justification for the change is a matter of debate.
Citing the complexities of bankruptcy law, experts said there was no guarantee a judge would approve Indiana’s claim.
“Bankruptcy court is the last refuge of environmental scofflaws,†said Pat Parenteau, a Vermont Law School professor who specializes in environmental and natural resource issues. “This is one of the more fiendishly complicated areas of crossover between environmental law and bankruptcy law that you can imagine.â€
But Tim Method, a former deputy commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, said the state’s approach to business regulation changed abruptly with the new administration.
“Daniels felt we ought to work for a business rather than be a hindrance,†said Method, who was among a handful of administrators forced out after Daniels took over.
Greg Pence wasn’t out of work for long. Within months, Daniels appointed him deputy commissioner of the Department of Environmental Management, the same agency fighting Kiel Bros. in court. Pence stepped down after only a few months, however, and returned to the petroleum business.
Daniels spokesman Jim Bush said the Pence family’s political influence played no role in Greg Pence’s hire. He declined to comment on the state’s decision to drop its claim against Kiel Bros. in bankruptcy court.
For some families living near Columbus, the Kiel Bros. business left behind more than debt. They smelled oil in water drawn from private wells. Nearly three decades later, the unincorporated area known as Garden City is a federal Superfund site, a designation reserved for the nation’s most heavily polluted locations.
Investigators initially determined Kiel Bros. was the source of the oil, along with a plume of trichloroethylene detected decades ago under a gas station. The chemical called TCE is a solvent used to degrease metal parts. The EPA says the plume is drifting toward the aquifer that is Columbus’ primary source of drinking water.
State officials seesawed over whether the company was responsible for the TCE before concluding in 2002 that it was not.
“Why did we absolve the company that we think the problem started with?†said Kevin Butler, a former teacher whose father was one of the first to smell the oil. “It just doesn’t seem very logical that this problem would be centered to this area, and confined to this area if it wasn’t the responsibility of that company.â€
Indiana has since spent more than $860,000 cleaning up the petroleum. The EPA estimates it could cost $320,000 to $1.6 million to take care of the TCE, which taxpayers will likely foot the bill for.
After Kiel Bros. filed for bankruptcy, more than 500 creditors sought more than $150 million from the company, with the state of Indiana filing one of the largest claims, records show.
In dropping its claims against the company for more than $8.4 million, state officials stated in a 2007 court filing that “significant cleanup activity has occurred.†They also said they were “satisfied†with the company’s plan for future cleanup, which relied on the state paying much of the cost.
The decision likely made more money available for other creditors, including businesses the company was in debt to, said John A.E. Pottow, a bankruptcy expert, and University of Michigan Law School professor.
“You don’t normally drop your claims in a bankruptcy case, so that’s kind of weird,†said Pottow. “If I’m a creditor, I am elated if one of my peers drops their claim.â€
When an underground tank leaks, companies are liable for the damage, but Indiana has been especially amenable to using public money to pay for heavily contaminated soil to be excavated and for high-powered pumps to suck toxic liquid and vapor from the soil.
The state’s payout limit was $2 million per site until Mike Pence signed a 2016 law as governor, increasing it to $2.5 million. In 2016, Indiana paid out nearly two-and-a-half times the national average per incident, according to records.
Historically, Indiana has been somewhat ambivalent toward environmental enforcement, said David M. Uhlmann, an environmental law and policy professor at University of Michigan Law School.
The decision to drop the court fight with Kiel Bros. could have been “Indiana being Indiana,†Uhlmann said. But another plausible explanation “is Pence and his family having outsized influence,†he said.
Farah, the vice president’s spokeswoman, said Pence did not use his political position to gain favorable treatment for his brother or the company, saying any suggestion otherwise is “simply not grounded in fact.â€
Just outside the Pences’ hometown, the state installed elaborate water-filtration systems decades ago at several homes and businesses that are closest to the service station above the chemical plume.
Mike Musillami, the owner of a drive-in restaurant, said he’s fortunate to have the equipment, which is maintained by state officials. But many of his customers aren’t as lucky, he said. They rely on bottled water or paper cartridge filters or simply take the risk of drinking from the tap without an elaborate filtration system.
“Long-term, this cannot be good for them,†he said. “These are people who are our daily customers. We want them around a long time.â€
Vanderburgh County Board of Commissioners Meeting
AGENDA of Vanderburgh County
Board of Commissioners
July 17, 2018, at 3:00 pm, Room 301
- Call to Order
- Attendance
- Pledge of Allegiance
- Action ItemsÂ
- Vanderburgh County Life Insurance Renewal
- Final Reading of Ordinance CO.07-18-014 As Amended: County Health Department Fee Change
- Board Appointment
- Department Head Reports
- New Business
- Old Business
- Consent Items
- Contracts, Agreements and Leases
- Approval of July 10, 2018 Meeting Minutes
- Employment ChangesÂ
- County Auditor:Â
- 7/9-7/13/18 Claims Voucher ReportÂ
- Statement of Salaries & Wages (Form 144)
- County Clerk: June 2018 Monthly Report
- Road Closure Request:
- West Terrace PTA, West Terrace 4K4 Kids on 9/22/18
- Christian Fellowship Church, Hope for Uganda 5K on 10/27/2018
- Soil and Water Conservation District: June 25, 2018 Meeting Minutes
- County Commissioners: Memorandum of Sublease with SEZ HoldingsÂ
- Purdue Extension: ANCS phone system quote
- County Treasurer: Travel RequestÂ
- County Engineer:
- Department Head Report
- ClaimsÂ
- Public Comment
- Rezoning
- First Reading of Rezoning Ordinance VC-6-2018
Petitioner: Robert & Kimau Faulkner
Address: 1809 Allens Lane
Request: Change from Ag to C-2
-
- Final Reading of Rezoning Ordinance VC-5-2018
Petitioner: Kloc Holdings, LLC
Address: 610 E. Hillsdale Road
Request: Change from R to C-4 and Ag
-
- Final Reading of Rezoning Ordinance VC-4-2018
Petitioner: B & L Properties
Address: 12401 Browning Road
Request: Change from Ag to PUD
- Adjournment
12 Russians Accused Of Hacking In 2016 U. S. Election
IL for www.theindianalawyer.com
The Justice Department on Friday indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers on charges they hacked into Democratic email accounts during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and released stolen information in the months before Americans headed to the polls.
The indictment — which comes days before President Donald Trump holds a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin — was the clearest allegation yet of Russian efforts to meddle in American politics. U.S. intelligence agencies have said the interference was aimed at helping the presidential campaign of Republican Donald Trump and harming the election bid of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
The top Democrat in the Senate is calling on President Donald Trump to cancel his coming meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin in the wake of new charges. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the indictments are “further proof of what everyone but the president seems to understand: President Putin is an adversary who interfered in our elections to help President Trump win.”
Schumer said Trump should cancel his meeting with Putin until Russia takes steps to prove it won’t interfere in future elections.
In announcing the charges Friday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Russian intelligence agents stole information on 500,000 U.S. voters after hacking a state U.S. election board. The charges are part of the ongoing special counsel probe into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The indictment lays out a sweeping and coordinated effort to break into key Democratic email accounts, including those belonging to the Democratic National Committee, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
The charges come as special counsel Robert Mueller investigates potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign to influence the presidential election. The indictment does not allege that Trump campaign associates were involved in the hacking efforts or that any American was knowingly in contact with Russian intelligence officers.
The indictment does not allege that any vote tallies were altered by hacking.
Still, Rosenstein said the internet “allows foreign adversaries to attack Americans in new and unexpected ways. Free and fair elections are hard-fought and contentious and there will always be adversaries who work to exacerbate domestic differences and try to confuse, divide and conquer us.â€
Before Friday, 20 people and three companies had been charged in the Mueller investigation. That includes four former Trump campaign and White House aides, three of whom have pleaded guilty to different crimes and agreed to cooperate, as well as 13 Russians accused of participating in a hidden but powerful social media campaign to sway American public opinion in the 2016 election.
Hours before the Justice Department announcement, Trump complained anew that the special counsel’s investigation is complicating his efforts to forge a better working relationship with Russia. Trump and Putin are to hold talks Monday in Finland, a meeting largely sought by Trump.
Trump said at a news conference Friday near London with British Prime Minister Theresa May that he wasn’t going into the meeting with Putin with “high expectations.â€
“We do have a — a political problem where — you know in the United States we have this stupidity going on. Pure stupidity,†he said, referring to Mueller’s probe. “But it makes it very hard to do something with Russia. Anything you do, it’s always going to be, ‘Oh, Russia, he loves Russia.’â€
“I love the United States,†Trump continued. “But I love getting along with Russia and China and other countries.â€
College Students, Come To Ellis Park For College Day On July 22nd!
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LORAINE POOL TEAM CAPTURES CITY SWIM MEET

Swimmers Come Out For the 2018 “City Swim Meetâ€
Swimmers came out in droves this afternoon for the 2018 “City Swim Meetâ€.
The event was held at Garvin Park Pool, and finals began at 9 this morning. About 500 swimmers participated in this year’s competition. Swimmers ranged from ages 4-65.
Garvin Park Pool was filled with plenty of spectators cheering the swimmers along.