FRIDAY December 27, 2013
Beating Boredom Page A3 Ideas for making the most of winter break
All Eyes On Quarterbacks Page B1 Leaders key in NFC North showdown
Weather Partly sunny, high 37. Tonight’s low 26. Warmer Friday, high in the low 40s. Low in upper 20s. Page A8
GOOD MORNING Newly sentenced murderer blamed for attack on jailer FORT WAYNE (AP) — Authorities say a man sentenced last week to the maximum sentence of 65 years in prison for murder was the inmate who assaulted and seriously injured a confinement officer at the Allen County Jail. Sheriff’s department spokesman Jeremy Tinkel says 18-year-old Deadrian Boykins will be charged with battery to a law enforcement officer, a class C felony. He was sentenced Friday for the April slaying of 17-yearold Elijah Freeman in Fort Wayne. Tinkel says the confinement officer, Quinton Greer, remains hospitalized in serious but stable condition following the Christmas morning attack. Tinkel says Greer has worked three years as a confinement officer.
Judge rejects appeal by ex-election chief NOBLESVILLE (AP) — A judge has denied former Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White’s request to have his conviction on voter fraud and other charges overturned and ordered White to begin serving his sentence of a year of home confinement. Hamilton County Superior Court Judge Daniel Pfleging ruled Monday that there was no evidence to show that White’s trial attorney, Carl Brizzi, shouldn’t enjoy the “strong presumption of competence” and that Brizzi’s trial strategy was “objectively reasonable.” Pfleging wrote that White couldn’t point to a single piece of evidence or a witness that would have swayed the jury’s decision, and that White hasn’t presented anything during post-conviction evidentiary hearings that challenged Pfleging’s “confidence in the outcome or the process which produced it.” White’s current attorney, Bryan Ciyou, didn’t respond to an email seeking comment Thursday. His office said he wouldn’t be at work Thursday. White was removed as secretary of state in February 2012 after being convicted of three counts of voter fraud, two counts of perjury and one count of theft. The charges stemmed from his use of his ex-wife’s home in Fishers as his voting address in 2010 while serving on the Fishers Town Council and running for secretary of state.
Info • The Star 118 W. Ninth St. Auburn, IN 46706 Auburn: (260) 925-2611 Fax: (260) 925-2625 Classifieds: (toll free) (877) 791-7877 Circulation: (toll free) (800) 717-4679
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Classifieds.................................B5-B7 Life..................................................... A6 Obituaries......................................... A4 Opinion ............................................. A5 Sports.........................................B1-B3 Weather............................................ A8 TV/Comics .......................................B4 Vol. 101 No. 355
The Auburn, Indiana
Serving DeKalb County since 1871 75 cents
kpcnews.com
Feds sue for Miller’s employees Bank accused of bad stock buy WARSAW — The U.S. Department of Labor has filed a lawsuit over what it says is a bank’s improper handling of employee funds for a northeast Indiana health care chain. The lawsuit announced Thursday was filed in U.S. District Court to recover losses to the Miller’s Health Systems Inc. Employee Stock Ownership Plan.
Miller’s Health is a Warsawbased company that manages long-term care and assisted-living facilities, including Miller’s Merry Manor facilities in LaGrange and Garrett. The suit alleges that PBI Bank Inc., trustee of the plan, authorized the purchase of company stock for $40 million, an amount far in excess of the fair market value
of the stock. The suit also alleges that PBI Bank approved financing for the transaction at an excessive interest rate. “Fiduciaries must act with undivided loyalty to plan participants. When it comes to (employee stock ownership plan) purchases, they must ensure that the plan receives full value for its money,” said Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employee Benefits Security Phyllis C. Borzi. The suit alleges that PBI
City Hall marks a BY AARON ORGAN aorgan@kpcmedia.com
AUBURN — One hundred years old and Auburn City Hall looks like it hasn’t aged a day. The structure at Cedar and Ninth streets did indeed turn 100 years old this month, and looking at old and new photographs of the building, you’d be hard pressed to find any differences a century has made to its exterior. Let’s rewind with the help of DeKalb County historian John Bry. In the early 1900s, a makeshift city hall stood at Cedar and Ninth streets that POSTCARD COURTESY OF DEKALB COUNTY HISTORIAN JOHN BRY housed the city’s fire department. Around 1912, then-Mayor Hugh A postcard shows an artist’s rendering of Auburn City Hall in Culbertson began tossing around 1913, and a photo shows City Hall as it stands today. the idea of erecting a more stately city hall. About the same time, Auburn High School and the DeKalb County Courthouse were built, and several area libraries, churches and other institutional buildings were rising, including Garrett City Hall (which still stands today). Bry said Culbertson watched the Garrettt project closely, and the Auburn’s leaders actually toured the building. “It was kind of a friendly rivalry, as Garrett was starting to boom and going through this massive growth and expansion, so Auburn and Garrett were kind of watching each other in terms of their improvement projects,” said Bry. AARON ORGAN Before long, Culbertson furnishings. pulled the trigger on Auburn’s “It’s a wonderful example Originally, City Hall housed project. The city council and about how City Hall has the marshal’s office, the superinCulbertson invited the public tendent of the Light and Water to look at designs and offer been preserved and adapted Works, the city jail and the fire input before the Toledo-based department on the first floor. architectural firm of Mills, over the years and still is The clerk-treasurer, the mayor’s Rhines, Bellman, and Nordhoff office, the city clerk’s office, was picked to design the a very much functional and the Board of Health, the city building ahead of the architect beautiful and attractive engineer, firefighters’ dorms who designed Garrett City Hall and the Auburn school board and Auburn High School, Bry building 100 years later.” occupied the second floor. The said. The city hired prominent third floor held the council contractor H.H. Achamier of chambers with seating for 165 Auburn, who built Auburn High patrons, Bry said. The building School, to build City Hall for John Bry also had public restrooms and $29,000. showers in the basement “in Achamier constructed the DeKalb County historian which the itinerants can be building within the year. It was washed and cleaned for safe dedicated Dec. 1, 1913, and all told, cost $31,000 including SEE CITY HALL, PAGE A8
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violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act by imprudently and disloyally approving the purchase of stock by the plan. The suit seeks to require PBI to restore all losses suffered by the plan, plus interest. The Chicago Regional Office of the department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration investigated a September 2007 stock purchase. The department concluded SEE MILLER’S, PAGE A8
Storm woes linger Much of Michigan still has no power GARDINER, Maine (AP) — Snow fell Thursday in places still hustling to get power back on after a weekend ice storm that turned out the lights from Michigan to Maine and into Canada. Eastern Maine and parts of the state’s interior that have been without electricity since Sunday anticipated 3 to 7 inches of snow by the time the latest system pushed off the coast Thursday night. Utilities worried that the additional weight on branches and transmission lines could cause setbacks in the around-the-clock efforts to restore power. “We don’t think it’s going to help us much, that’s for sure,” said Susan Faloon, a spokeswoman for Bangor Hydro Electric in Maine. “There was some concern expressed over the last couple of days about that storm coming because obviously we still have lot of stuff weighing down trees and lines. “The system is pretty compromised out there,” she said. “We expect we will have more outages.” In Michigan, where about half a million homes and businesses lost power at the peak of the weekend storm, an inch or so of snow was expected. Utilities there reported 101,000 customers without power Thursday morning and said it could be Saturday before all electricity is restored. Tony Carone lost power in his Lapeer, Mich., home Sunday morning. The 52-year-old lineman for Detroit-based DTE knew there were long hours ahead. “I was one of the casualties,” he said while taking a break from restoration work Thursday morning. Maine reported more than 21,000 customers still out, down from a high of more than 106,000. SEE STORM, PAGE A8
Obama signs bipartisan budget deal, defense bill HONOLULU (AP) — President Barack Obama signed a bipartisan budget deal Thursday easing spending cuts and a defense bill cracking down on sexual assault in the military, marking a modest end to a challenging year for the White House and Congress. Obama put his signature on both hard-fought bills while vacationing in Hawaii, where the president has been laying low since Saturday as he regroups for the midterm election year ahead. The bill signing marks one of Obama’s last official acts in a year beset by a partial government shutdown, a near-default by the Treasury, a calamitous health care rollout and near-perpetual congressional gridlock.
Although the budget deal falls short of the grand bargain that Obama and congressional Republicans once aspired to, it ends the cycle of fiscal brinkmanship — for now — by preventing another shutdown for nearly two more years. But the rare moment of comity may be short-lived. Hanging over the start of the year is a renewed fight over raising the nation’s borrowing limit, which the Treasury says must be resolved by late February or early March to avert an unprecedented U.S. default. Both sides are positioning behind customary hard-line positions, with Republicans insisting they want concessions before raising the debt limit
and Obama insisting he won’t negotiate. The last vestiges of 2013’s legislative wrangling behind him, Obama’s attention turns now to major challenges and potential bright spots in the year ahead. In late January, Obama will give his fifth State of the Union address, setting his agenda for the final stretch before the 2014 midterm elections render him less able to focus Washington’s attention on his own priorities. Obama signed the two bills and several others in private, without reporters present, after an early-morning trip to the gym at the Marine Corps base near his vacation rental in Oahu. The product of intensive talks
before lawmakers left Washington for Christmas, the budget deal alleviates the harshest effects of automatic budget cuts on the Pentagon and domestic agencies. It reduces those cuts, known as the sequester, by about one-third, restoring approximately $63 billion over two years. A projected $85 billion in savings are located elsewhere in the deal, including increases in an airport security tax and a fee corporations pay to have pensions guaranteed by the government. Also included: a contentious provision to pare down annual cost of living increases in benefits for military retirees under age 62 to save the government about $6.3 billion over a decade.