BY PATRICK GUINANE, Times of Northwest Indiana
pguinane@nwitimes.com
INDIANAPOLIS | Seventy-five years is a long time. No one in Indianapolis disputes that, not when a political eternity can be measured in a matter of a few years.
Politics, as much as anything else, have shaped the last month of debate over Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels' plan to turn over the Indiana Toll Road to Cintra - Macquarie, a Spanish-Australian consortium offering $3.85 billion for a 75-year lease.
On Thursday, Sen. Glenn Howard, D-Indianapolis, brought a group of local ministers with him to announce support for Major Moves, a 10-year, $10.6-billion road construction plan predicated on a Toll Road lease. Citing the jobs it could create, Howard became the General Assembly's first Democrat to support Major Moves. Daniels hopes Howard won't be the last.
"Maybe as the process moves forward, they'll feel a little more at liberty to vote the interests of their districts," Daniels said.
House Democrats stood united against that plan earlier this month. Veteran Rep. Chet Dobis, D-Merrillville, doesn't expect that to change.
"I've not seen a crack in the dike," he said. "In fact, I think we're more solidified than ever on this thing."
There's good reason for that. Northwest Indiana residents are opposed to the Toll Road lease by a margin of at least 3-to-1, local legislators say after reviewing constituent surveys. More scientific polling from the national firm Survey USA puts Daniels' popularity 43rd among governors nationwide.
If House Democrats hold on to their 48 current seats and pick up three more this fall, they would wrestle control away from Republican Speaker Brian Bosma, of Indianapolis. That possibility isn't lost on Daniels, who bristled at a Senate plan to deny him the power to privatize future tollways, including a planned Interstate 69 extension from Indianapolis to Evansville.
"I think we want to maintain enough flexibility that someone will actually bid on future projects," he said.
It also could be much more difficult to obtain such authority next year if unabashedly partisan House Minority Leader Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend, becomes speaker.
House Republicans who represent the Toll Road corridor moved to shield themselves from potential voter backlash before approving Major Moves earlier this month. They secured $100 million to create a Northeast Indiana Regional Development Authority and won a 10-year toll freeze for residents of the seven-county area.
The Senate gutted those provisions last week. Instead, each of the seven counties would get $30 million up front for economic development. An annual income-tax credit would replace the toll freeze, with drivers allowed to deduct the lesser of $300 or half the tolls they paid.
A House-Senate conference committee likely will work out these differences in early March.
The Senate also wants to set aside $400 million in a trust fund that could not be tapped until interest swells its balance past $1 billion.
That could take two decades. Daniels hopes it won't take that long to convince the public that leasing the Toll Road is a good deal.
"I do believe that, before too very long, this will achieve widespread acceptance and enthusiasm in the state," he said. "Don't think it doesn't bother me a lot to be trying to do something I know is in our common interest and have folks misunderstand it."