LAFAYETTE – All last-ditch efforts to save the Hoosier State, an Amtrak
passenger rail line that comes through Lafayette on the way to and from
Indianapolis and Chicago, couldn’t find a sympathetic vote in the
Indiana General Assembly or in Indiana’s next two-year budget.
The
$34 billion budget approved late Wednesday night, just before lawmakers
ended the 2019 session, cut $3 million a year set aside of the Hoosier
State in previous budgets.
“I’m very disappointed,”
said Sen. Ron Alting, a Lafayette Republican who said he worked in the
closing weeks of the session with Reps. Sheila Klinker, D-Lafayette,
Chris Campbell, D-West Lafayette, and Sharon Negele, R-Attica, to try to
find room in the budget for the Hoosier State.
“I
thought it was a small amount of money in a $34 billion budget, quite
honestly,” Alting said. “But the Hoosier State wasn’t in (Gov. Eric
Holcomb’s) budget, and it wasn’t in the House version of the budget. So
that was hard to overcome, at the end of the day. … We gave it a 100
percent effort.”
On
Thursday, Marc Magliari, an Amtrak spokesman, confirmed that the
Hoosier State won’t run beyond June 30, which is when Indiana’s current
state budget ends.
Amtrak already had been preparing for that possibility.