News

Frankfort officials have decided not to pursue a contract with a new recycling plant after their previous partner’s facility burned down earlier this week. Trash crews will still resume curbside pickup of recyclable materials next week.

A healthcare consultant and former hospital administrator is headed to the Statehouse to replace outgoing Republican state representative Kevin Mahan.

Ann Vermilion of Grant County was until recently the longtime administrative director of Marion General Hospital, where she helped an effort to decrease the number of opioid prescriptions written.  She now runs a healthcare consulting business.

Vermilion asked a GOP caucus to select her because she’s passionate about rural Indiana and party values.

The City of Bloomington is suspending the Community Farmer's Market for two weeks citing a concern for public safety after recent protests and an arrest over suspected ties between a market vendor and a white nationalist group. 

A Monday press release says the city has identified "increasing threats to public safety."

Frankfort officials have suspended the city’s curbside recycling pickup this week after a Monday fire at a recycling plant, but officials say residents can still drop off materials at the city street department.

Street Superintendent Jason Forsythe says the city began partnering with Werner and Son for its recycling a few years ago, when the amount of materials to be processed became too much for its own facilities.

A fire at a Frankfort recycling plant continued to burn Monday afternoon as firefighters fought back the blaze.

Teams were dispatched to Werner and Son Recycling around 4:30 Monday morning after a passerby reported what they thought was a dumpster fire. Officials don’t know what caused the blaze, which tore down much of the east side of the building and left only the façade on the west.

It'll likely be at least mid-August before the cause of the fire which razed five homes in West Lafayette's Lindberg Village neighborhood is released.

Wabash Township Fire Chief Ed Ward, reached by phone Monday morning, says as many as a dozen investigators are now slated to gather on August 12 -- a full month after the fire started -- to survey the scene.

Some of those will be state and local officials, but others will represent insurance agencies for the homeowners and for businesses, such as Vectren, which supplies natural gas to the neighborhood.

It’s unlikely Tippecanoe County will have new election machines to use in the 2020 election.

Election Board Chairman Randy Vonderheide calls it “very unlikely” machines can be purchased, certified and made compatible with existing e-pollbook software before the end of the year.

County Clerk Julie Roush says Indiana law mandates each county to take those steps by the end of the year preceding an election. So the deadline for the 2020 presidential cycle would be December 31, 2019.

Though Tippecanoe County Election Board members say they’re happy Purdue University is going to modify its identification cards, members Thursday indicated some current students might still be unable to vote unless they obtain a different ID.

Local election officials have, for more than a decade, allowed Purdue IDs to be considered valid forms of photo identification under the state’s voter ID law. But Election Board member Kent Moore says state leaders have adopted a new interpretation of statute.