Marc Lotter, spokesperson for the Communications Director of Indiana Department of Workforce Development says the process should be a quick one for those previously deemed eligible.

“They can begin applying online on Monday. They’ll return to the system Tuesday to file their first weekly voucher if they’re eligible and then their money could be on their debit cards as early as Wednesday if they’re eligible to receive it,” he said.

Those who haven’t exhausted their unemployment will continue claiming benefits as usual.

Lotter says the unemployment trust fund will not be impacted.

“These extensions will not have an impact on the unemployment insurance trust fund because they are being paid one hundred percent by the federal government,” Lotter said.

Indiana currently has an unemployment rate of nine point eight percent.  Lotter says two hundred thousand Hoosiers are currently being supported by unemployment benefits, but new applications have been on the decline for the past seven months.

Originally, the centers were funded by federal legislation called the Family Planning Program grant.  Under a new competitive granting structure, Family Planning dollars go away and three different grants are bundled together to help fund Planned Parenthood.

With the changes come new regulations regarding how the organization can receive money and for what services the cash can be used. Beginning this year, organizations like Planned Parenthood of Indiana, or PP-IN, local health clinics and family planning centers annually apply for grants administered by the Indiana Family Health Council and the Indiana State Department of Health.

PP-IN CEO Betty Cockrum says the regulations for the newly-merged grant don’t fit Planned Parenthood’s service model.

“Because the regulations that are being used now for the entire pot of money are more stringent, it became economically impossible to continue to operate under that funding,” said Cockrum.

Many Planned Parenthood clinics offer free contraception, subsidized by Medicaid, private donors and customer revenue, but charge for check-ups and other services.  Under the new regulations, every Medicaid-eligible patient who comes to a clinic receiving grant funding must receive all services that clinic offers for free, while everyone else pays based on a sliding scale.

Indiana has strict Medicaid eligibility requirements when compared to other states.  The average childless woman with no assets or disabilities cannot make more than nineteen percent of the Federal Poverty Level to qualify for Medicaid.  In other words, for her income to qualify her for free service, she must not make more than about $2,500 a year.

Ellettsville State Senator Vi Simpson says the issue should be a bigger priority for Indiana lawmakers.

“I think clearly this administration is not committed to providing family planning services.  You know it just was a low priority for them,” said Simpson. “Our preoccupation with all the resources at FSSA to deal with the IBM contract fiasco may have prevented them on moving forward on some very important initiatives like family planning waivers.  I don’t know the answer to that.  But I suppose most of the department was busy putting out fires created by the IBM contract.  Maybe they didn’t have time.”

WFIU contacted three Republican lawmakers, including members of the Senate Health and Provider Services committee and the House Public Health committee for a response, but all were unavailable for comment.

More than half of all states have family planning waivers, which broaden Medicaid eligibility for reproductive health exams and contraception.

According to the Guttamacher Institute, a research center for reproductive health, every Medicaid dollar spent on family planning saves at least three dollars over the long term.  Currently, Indiana Medicaid dollars are paying for the pregnancy and births of more than half of all babies born in the state.

Because of the stricter regulations and decreased funding, Planned Parenthood officials say they anticipate serving fewer people.  Despite PP-IN closing six clinics as a cost-cutting measure, there are still family planning service providers in all of the locations losing Planned Parenthood centers, with the exception of Shelbyville.

Wilson said, “The fact that the city drafted the waiver to say “city services” was misleading to anyone who signed the waiver, thinking that they would have got police and fire protection, sidewalks, traffic control,  parks and recs use, trash pickup and all those things that are considered city services.”

City lawyer Carl Greci says that both sides presented strong arguments, but can’t tell which way Judge Lett is leaning. “The issues were well-presented and well-argued by all the sides and we just look forward to giving the court an opportunity to do its job and review the record and make a ruling,” said Greci.

Judge Lett asked for time to consider the arguments and signatures and gave no definitive time frame on his decision.

The amendment, proposed by Councilman Jim Lienhoop allows for residents to decide how much trash they’re willing to pay to throw away. If the amended ordinance passes city officials will charge $14 for a 96 gallon toter, $12 for a 64 gallon toter and $10 for a 48 gallon toter. Houses requiring more than one receptacle would be charged separately for each. Lienhoop said he expects the tiered system to raise about $2,000,000 dollars in funds—the same dollar amount officials estimated a flat fee would bring in—Leinhoop said that money will help bolster the city’s shrinking budget. He said the plan will encourage city residents to be more mindful of what they’re throwing away.

“We’re hopeful with the tiered system that we proposed that we will minimize or at least reduce the amount of waste that goes out there,” Leinhoops said. “We’re really looking forward to hearing in January some proposals for some curb side recycling. I understood from other communities that its been very successful in reducing meaningful percentage of waste that goes to the landfill and I’m hopeful that we can do something like that here.”

But Council member Pricilla Scalf, said she doesn’t support the amendment as it stands, saying the tiered system simply won’t put enough emphasis on recycling.

“I think without having the curb side recycling that it does not incentivize people to do the recycling. I think that’s very important,” Scalf said. “I also feel like that there’s a lot of expense that’s going to be incurred with trying to keep changing out toters and for people to figure out what toter they want and that’s money that the city really doesn’t have right now.”

Council members voted to table the topic until the next meeting. Scalf was the only “no” vote on the amendment.

“What we’re hearing from them is ‘We support a diverse business climate — one that is market-driven,’” Gillenwater said. “Many of them see chain businesses often as resources to pool and attract more people.”

Kruzan, though, was blunt in his reaction to the poll, saying “This survey has no impact whatsoever.”   “I expressed concern when the survey first went out that it did not in any way ask members to have meaningful input,” said the Mayor, himself a Chamber member.  “It instead listed all the reasons the Chamber was opposed to it and then asked people to express whether they were opposed to it or not.  That’s just not the way you would think a sincere effort to participate in a process would work.”

The mayor says he’s dismayed the Chamber would come out against a proposal which has not been written yet and which is being discussed by a committee with Chamber members on it.  Gillenwater says Chamber leaders do not see an existing problem with chain businesses and therefore do not see the need for an ordinance regulating the issue.

When conducting an underwater search, drivers need more than trunks or a two-piece. Bloomington Police Lieutenant David Goodrich described it this way:

“Wrap yourself in the tightest clothes you can, put a black bag over your head, crawl inside your freezer, close the door, and sit there for 45 or 50 minutes, and then look for a thimble with big, thick, heavy gloves on,” he said.

At a quarry on the outskirts of Bloomington, members of the dive team hone their skills.  Sergeant George Connolly leads the group in a series of exercises, practicing swimming formations that aim to make the search process more efficient. Because the water is usually murky during dives, dive team members conduct searches mostly by feel, and communicate with those on the shore by touching or tugging on a rope.  Connolly said what search pattern is used depends on what the divers are looking for and what kind of water they’re swimming in.

“If we have a large area and we’re looking for a body, and we’re in rescue mode so while the sonar is being set up we can put divers in,” Connolly said.  “And they form a V, kind of like geese flying, with a line going from the center to the surface and the surface swimmer guides them around the search area.  That allows us to cover a large area in short time period but it only works for a large item.”

Connolly said an accident in the early 1990s at Lake Monroe showed local law enforcement they needed a new unit.

“A Community member was very upset with the response time, the agencies responding at the time were the State Police and the D-N-R were the only dive teams in this area, and their response time, because they’re spread all over the place, was very long,” he said.  “Well, the family member was familiar with something called cold water near-drowning which gives you a golden hour to save a life.”

Conneley said a person submerged for an hour in cold water can still be resuscitated – hence “golden hour”.  In less than 70-degree water,  humans have an involuntary response called the mammalian dive reflex that allows survival even after prolonged periods of submersion.  The reflex slows the heartbeat and redirects blood flow from the extremities to the heart, brain, and lungs.  However, when pulled from the water, a person in this state often appears dead and requires very specialized medical care.  Connolly said in some rare cases, people have been submerged much longer than an hour and fully recovered.

“The record is over four hours for, I believe it was a four-year-old child, that fell through the ice, was submerged for four hours, brought out, and a study done years later decided there was absolutely no brain damage from the incident,” he said.

Soon after the dive team’s formation in 1992, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department opened the team up to other agencies.  Membership is voluntary.  Interested officers can sign up, but they have to supply their own equipment and commit themselves to a rigorous training schedule.  There’s also the psychological impact of pulling bodies out of the water.  It’s not all gloom though — the team has recovered murder weapons, helping bring criminals to justice… and they’ve even had the opportunity to recover a missing wedding ring.

The most visible members of the Bloomington Police Department may patrol the city in squad cars or staff big football games, but there several branches of the which aren’t as high-profile.  This week, WFIU’s Arianna Prothero explores two of those branches.  In the first of a two-part series, a ride with the newly reinstated K-9 Unit…

The newest addition to the Bloomington Police Department… is of the four-legged variety.  His human partner, Officer Jon Hoffmeister, has been with the force for 5 years.  On this particular night, the two are sent out to work as soon as they clock-in.  While navigating his squad car through busy traffic on Walnut Street, Hoffmeister explained it could be an eventful evening.

“Our narcotics unit, or Special investigations if you will, I guess they received information from one of their informants that there is a car coming back from Indianapolis with a substantial quantity of illegal contraband- I don’t even know what it is.”

Upon finding the car in question, Lesko starts barking in anticipation.  But tonight, it’s fellow K-9 Officer Pongo’s turn to sniff out the drugs.  His human partner, Officer Dana Cole, starts waving a white towel and soon the two are playing a rigorous game of tug-of-war.  To the untrained observer, this may not seem like police work, but Hoffmeister said there’s more to it than meets the eye.

“We use a towel and fake throw a towel, the towel that Dana has,” Hoffmeister said.  “So basically what it is, is that Pongo thinks that he’s looking for a towel.  So if he indicates on this car, which would be by parking and scratching at the vehicle, then Dana’s going to throw the towel in there and we know that there’s the presence of some sort of narcotic substance in there.”

On their own, dogs don’t really care about drugs.  However, they do enjoy a good game of tug-of-war.  Over the course of their training, narcotics dogs are taught to associate the smell of a towel with all sorts of different kinds of drugs.  What does that have to do with Officer Cole and Pongo?  At the scene Cole is using a scentless towel, so once he throws it into the car, Pongo will go in after it but he’ll sniff out the drugs instead because he’s been trained to think the towel smells like drugs.  But that’s not all there is to it — both Hoffmeister and Cole have to be able to read their dogs’ body language.  The officers learn how to do this both during training and by watching their partners at home.  It’s pretty standard in the industry for police dogs to live with their handlers.  Cole said it takes a lot of time and patience to establish a good working relationship between dog and human.

“I’ve been told this by numerous people, it takes the handler and the K-9 a good year before they really mesh into a team,” he said.  “You know, right now there’s a human handler and a K-9 but over time we’re learning things about each other, how we interact and work and everything, and we’re slowly becoming that team.”

Pongo and Lesko aren’t your average dogs either.  Their pure-bred German shepherds, born and raised in the Czech Republic.  Dogs of this caliber can cost anywhere from $8,000 to $15,000 if they come fully trained.  That’s because there’s a lot of things Pongo and Lesko can do that their human counterparts can’t.  German Shepherds literally have a sense of smell that is tens of thousands of times better than a human’s.  They can also run twice as fast as the average human.  Lesko has even taught himself how to open Hoffmeister’s squad car door from the outside by hooking his long, thin nose under the door handle and pulling outwards.  Hoffmeister said all of these attributes are extremely important to police work, especially in a college town which sees a fair amount of drug trafficking.

“Because they are a tool we can use.  Everything we carry on our belt is a tool, you can’t put them on a belt but they are another tool on the belt.”

Both Hoffmeister and Cole are working to find creative ways to help pay for their dogs’ safety through grants and private donations.  Recently, they discovered a non-profit that gives away bullet proof vests for K-9 officers.  Sure, it’s extra work at the end of a long day, but Hoffmeister and Cole say it’s worth it knowing Lesko and Pongo would make the ultimate sacrifice to protect them and their community.

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Indiana’s senior Senator, Richard Lugar, has aligned himself with the majority of Senate Republicans by saying he will not vote for any health insurance legislation currently being discussed.

But Evan Bayh has said little about his stance, leading many to think he’s one of three swing votes in the Senate needed for Democrats to pass their plan. Hoosier native Tavis Smiley says he considers Bayh a good friend.

In town for a naming ceremony in his honor, the public broadcasting personality said Bayh has been straddling the fence on health care, at the expense of representing constituents.

“I don’t think that now is the time for coyness. Senator, what do you mean by public option? What do you think it ought to mean? He’s right when he says nobody should vote for something they’ve never read. He’s right number two that public option could be defined 18 million ways. But he’s wrong about the fact that the approach is about passivity,” Smiley said.

“I think it’s about being aggressive and saying to the people of Indiana that, ‘I’m going to do everything I can to make sure there’s going to be a public option. Here’s how I define it.’ Take your definition in there and get in the debate. Mix it up. But you’ve got to have a point of view about this.”

Susan Bayh, the senator’s wife, has earned more than two million dollars from serving on the corporate boards of health insurance companies over the past decade. While some have suggested that connection represents a conflict of interest for the senator, Smiley says Bayh’s hesitation likely stems from how much the bill will eventually cost.

But paying by credit card is creating another issue all its own.

Credit card companies always charge a fee for a swipe, but retailers usually pass along the cost by upping prices. But Indiana counties aren’t legally allowed to do this.  So they hire a third party to process the payments and  those companies are charging between two and four percent extra.

Counties could swallow those extra fees, but in an age of plummeting property tax revenue, most, if all not all, are charging taxpayers for the convenience of using their plastic.

Bartholomew County Deputy Treasurer Martha Lake says more taxpayers have little choice but to live off of credit cards, due to tough circumstances.

“This is not a good money time for a lot of people. Say they want to pay with their credit card and they find out there are additional fees. Many people they’re frustrated and I’m sorry for that. A lot of people don’t stick around to hear the whole explanation or they don’t even ask,” Lake said.

And she and others say they’ve heard their fair share of complaints. Monroe County Treasurer Cathy Smith says the fees, which could be in the thousands of dollars depending on the size of the property tax bill, could be the difference between keeping and losing a home.

Still, Martha Lake says there’s no way around the charges

“At this point this is the best we can do to provide that option,” she said. “And many treasurers are doing it exactly like we are. I don’t know of anybody who is not doing it this way under the circumstances, okay?”

But Bartholomew County Deputy Treasurer Rita Carr says some people are trying to use the card payments to their advantage.

“Well, some people want to use their credit cards because they get money back,” Carr said.

Three of the four treasurers interviewed for this story say some of their constituents are opting for the fee as a means to earning airline miles or gifts through their credit provider. Still others prefer the small credit card fee to a five or 10 percent late fee from a county and calculate it’s better to live with the smaller credit card charge…even if it carries the potential of a much higher interest later on.

John Barnes never thought he’d be digging graves for a living. In fact he’s been afraid to even enter a cemetery for most of his life.

“I’m the guy, that if I was driving down the road and a hearse pulled up beside me and we had to stop at the stop sign, I would turn just to keep from having to be beside that hearse,” he said.

Barnes refuses to watch scary movies. And now he’s in charge of opening and closing the graves at Rose Hill and White Oak cemeteries in Bloomington.

Digging a grave takes Barnes about 30 minutes with a backhoe—although he says he knows from talking to people who’ve had to dig one out by hand it takes about eight hours. To start, Barnes lays out the site using a plywood guide to be sure the lines are straight and the floor of the hole is level. The average hole is about 40 inches wide and truthfully, only about five feet deep. As Barnes digs a grave at White Oak his back hoe butts up against the edge of the grave next to it, uncovering the previously buried vault slightly. The two won’t touch, but Barnes says they’ll be no more than 5-inches apart, meaning he has to uncover the neighboring vault just to get this coffin in the ground.

The sod he unearths is used elsewhere in the cemetery and the dirt is stored, to close the same grave later and to build up fresh graves after a rain in an attempt to keep the lawn of the cemetery as even as possible. Barnes says by next summer, the grave he’s digging today should look like the ground was never disturbed. Barnes says he focuses on doing the best job he can every time—after all in the cemetery he wouldn’t want to risk it.

“Do I believe in ghosts? Well, I can say that like I told you before, I was a firefighter before I came here and I’ve seen a lot of things,” Barnesa said.  “So somewhere in the back of my mind there might be something that’s not explained all the way…so ghosts…I don’t know.”

On a tour of the grounds, Barnes confesses he’d never open a grave at night – again, precautions.

“One of the first things I did when I started digging the graves here, was I walked around to make sure I didn’t see my name on any stones. I saw, there’s a few in here with the last name Barnes and there’s only one that I saw with the first name that goes along with it and then I was looking to see that there wasn’t an “L” for the middle initial and then I was ok.”

Barnes has also exhumed bodies, but says he’s never been tempted to look inside.

“In the back of your mind you know that that was put there so now all of the sudden you’re digging it out you know… I really don’t wanna know what’s in there,” he said.  “I know basically what was in it before and then whatever comes out of it later I really don’t wanna know, because see, I have to sleep at night.”

Barnes says he’s never in a rush to get started in the morning. And who can blame him?  After all not many people are in a hurry to get in the cemetery.