Lake County casino plan gets 2nd chance

By Patrick Guinane, Times of Northwest Indiana
patrick.guinane@nwi.com

INDIANAPOLIS | Northwest Indiana lawmakers butted heads with legislative leaders Wednesday, and the collision bought more time to negotiate a bonanza for the region.

The final day of the four-month legislative session began with Reps. Charlie Brown and Vernon Smith, both Gary Democrats, pledging to withhold support for the state budget unless leadership allowed the relocation of one of their home city's two lakefront casinos.

Brown said he had lined up as many as a dozen votes against the budget in the Democratic-controlled House, where it ultimately failed on a 27-71 vote minutes before the midnight adjournment deadline. Democrats blamed Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels for demanding last-minute spending cuts without lining House GOP votes.

"It gives another shot," Sen. Earline Rogers, D-Gary, said of the looming special session. "What we were lacking in the regular session was time."

The proposal, first pitched two weeks ago, calls for relocating one of the Gary riverboats to the Little Calumet River or a land-based casino near the intersection of Intestate 65 and the Borman Expressway. Increased gaming revenues generated by the move would go to build a teaching hospital in Gary, extend South Shore extensions to Lowell and Valparaiso, and redevelop the Lake Michigan shoreline.

"That hospital project is far too important to be talking about putting it off," Brown said. "We're not giving up."

The casino proposal is linked to legislation to create a local income tax-backed transit authority to oversee South Shore commuter rail improvements and create a regional bus system for Lake and Porter counties.

Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, said inaction this year would imperil municipal bus service in East Chicago, Gary and Hammond, where state property tax caps are forcing budget cuts.

But top lawmakers balked at the proposed casino shift.

Both House Speaker Pat Bauer, D-South Bend, and Senate President David Long, R-Fort Wayne, said the proposal wasn't properly vetted. It never was introduced as stand-alone legislation and didn't endure a single public hearing.

"Those things have to be scrutinized," Bauer said. "You don't come out with 100 lobbyists in the last two weeks and try to do something like that."