Attorney General Curtis Hill today announced that he has joined attorneys general from 36 other states and Washington D.C. in urging the U.S. government to to allow the use of federal funds provided to the states’ Medicaid Fraud Control Units (MFCU) to investigate and prosecute a broader range of abuse and neglect cases.  

General Hill and the 37 other attorneys general signed a letter addressed to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Secretary Tom Price requesting more authority at the state level. The attorneys general request the use of federal funds provided to their respective MFCU units to detect, investigate and prosecute abuse and neglect cases, including those that happen in non-institutional settings such as home healthcare.The letter calls the current restrictions at the state level outdated and requests greater flexibility for states’ use of Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) assets.

How Does a Hockey Team Survive in River City?

Six seasons ago professional hockey made its debut in Evansville’s Ford Center. Civic pride was at an all-time high when the Ford Center was sold out for the Bob Seeger concert in the fall of 2011. Evansville leaders, which had taken a big gamble on building a downtown arena, was full of expectations for the new hockey team called the Evansville Icemen.

The Icemen opened their first season in what appeared to be a successful season and even progressed to the playoffs in the first year.  After 5 seasons, the Evansville Icemen let it be known that they had been losing money from day one. The Icemen did attract larger than expected crowds to the Ford Center where they paid $11,000 base rent per home game to the Ford Center for 36 games per year. That adds up to $396,000 base rent per season.  Also the Icemen paid a $2.00 per ticket facility fee to the Ford Center, which generates around $200,000 per year.  The $2.00 per ticket facility fee is not assessed to free comp tickets given to area not-for-profit organizations.  Finally , the Icemen paid the Ford Center $50,000 a year to lease the video and audio equipment. The total amount of money paid to the Ford Center by the Evansville Icemen was for five (5) seasons was approximately $650,000 a year.  According to psst guesstimates the crowds averaged nearly 200,000 attendees (paid and comp tickets) per season  and to the outside world things looked good.

Even after the IceMen reported generating total revenue from tickets, suites, etc. of over $3 Million per year, they publicly disclosed that they lost an average of $600,000 per year.  Sources indicate that after all was said and done the average admission only netted $13.75 for the first year and gradual increases over the next 4 years. The easiest way for the Icemen to have broken even would have been to either sell an additional 46,153 tickets (1,282 per game) or increase the ticket price by about $3.25 per game. The problem with those solutions was that the market for hockey in Evansville seems to only be about 5,000 people per game when the team is winning. To really be able to budget for an acceptable profit of say 15% the Icemen would have needed a $20 average ticket price without losing any fans or to sell out the 11,000 seats for every game at the $13 average. The other problem was the abundance of free tickets that drove attendance up in the early years.

The probability that either of these things could be achieved was low enough that the ownership of the Icemen decided to seek another location for the team. Bottom line. because of unreasonable contractural demands by the City of Evansville concerning a new 5 year contract the Icemen were forced to leave town. The Icemen recently agreed to play Hockey in Jacksonville, Florida.

Upon the departure of the Icemen a desperate effort to keep hockey alive in the $127 Million hockey rink resulted in the formation of a lesser level team called the Evansville Thunderbolts. A businessman with a passion for the sport came in as a 10% owner in the new team and enthusiasm was high. After a single season in which the team lost many more games than they won, the businessman made a quick exit from his equity stake and the team is now owned by VenuWorks that happens to be the manager of the Ford Center.

The Evansville Thunderbolts by all measures probably had a disastrous year from a financial perspective. Attendance fell to levels that were a small fraction of the Icemen’s levels, Executive suite rentals fell sharply and season ticket sales seemly dried up. Concession sales were way down. The Ford Center home game rental contract was amended from $11,000 per game that the Evansville Icemen paid down to $1,000 per game for the Thunderbolts which is essentially free. The losses incurred by the Evansville Thunderbolts have not been disclosed, but if the Icemen lost $600,000 per year one can only speculate that the Thunderbolts who average way less in home game attendence probably could have lost a lot more.

That brings us to the Ford Center which was paid for by the taxpayers of Evansville in a $127 Million bond issue that costs $8 Million per year in payments. The Ford Center admittedly also lost about $600,000 per year when the Icemen played there, not counting paying the $8 Million per year note payments. The people of are now under their leadership tasked with paying for the utilities for the Ford Center, providing free labor for the Thunderbolts, and absorbing all of the operating losses of the team in addition to paying $8 Million in payments per year. Several financial professionals place the losses attributed to the Ford Center at well over $10 Million per year.

So the question arises, can hockey survive in Evansville, Indiana. The answer appears to be no. Some places do not have sufficient markets to support everything that a starry eyed future governor wants to spend money on and this is one of them. Filling the building at what the market will bear will not create a profitable franchise. Subsidies of rent, utilities, and note payments won’t make it work either. Hockey teams have come and gone for 6 seasons now and a profit has never been made.

The Ford Center is another matter. The long suffering people of Evansville will continue to be taxed for the payment stream and the Evansville Redevelopment Commission will keep on subsidizing the operation of the Ford Center until the note is paid off. The people of Evansville will keep on dealing with crumbling infrastructure, sewer spillage, and the damages they cause.

What was carefully orchestrated by former Mayor Wienzapfel to pass without a referendum is now an albatross around the neck of the Evansville. taxpayers.  The damage will continue and the charades will too until some group of people are elected who will speak the truth.  As of today, we can’t even get an honest answer about what the utilities bills for the Ford Center are and who pays them.

Withholding that information from the taxpayers of Evansville is simply dishonest. Its obvious that member of the Evansville City Council have no idea what it means to be a “good steward of the public trust’! They should be ashamed of themselves!

FOOTNOTE: Todays “READERS POLL” question is: :Do you feel that our elected officials should immediately release information concerning who is  paying the utilities bills at the Ford Center?