Toll Road plan passes first test

INDIANAPOLIS | The governor's $3.85 billion plan to lease the Indiana Toll Road withstood its first challenge Tuesday, advancing to the full House on 14-10 party-line vote.

No Democrats voted for the measure, even after the House Ways and Means Committee limited the governor's privatization powers to roads and bridges by removing the references to ports, airports and rail facilities originally included in House Bill 1008.

The change marked the only major revision, although the committee spent most of the morning and another two hours in the evening sifting through amendments and lobbing scores of questions at top aides to Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels.

"I imagine someone could have come up with another question, but, man, you'd have to suck it out of them," said committee Chairman Jeff Espich, R-Uniondale.

Meanwhile, Democrats in both the House and Senate clamored for more time to consider the roughly 200-page unsigned lease agreement the governor made public a day earlier. On Monday, Daniels announced that the Spanish-Australian consortium that runs the Chicago Skyway has offered $3.85 billion for a 75-year Toll Road lease.

"If this is a good deal today, it'll be a good deal tomorrow," said Sen. Karen Tallian, D-Ogden Dunes.

Even some Republicans acknowledged that legislation to authorize the lease will need further tweaking before it's voted on by the full House.

Rep. Ralph Ayres, R-Chesteron, helped vote the unfinished measure out of committee.

"The issue is dead if it doesn't get out of Ways and Means," Ayres said. "Then there's nothing to discuss on the floor - there's no $1.3 billion to spread around northern Indiana, there's no penny to spread around northern Indiana."

Lake, Porter and the five other counties that surround the Toll Road have been promised $1.35 billion in transportation-related projects, or 34 percent of the lease proceeds. Ayres said he is still working to boost that share.

Meanwhile, another $2.5 billion would be disbursed statewide to fill a shortfall in Major Moves, the governor's 10-year, $10.6 billion transportation plan.

The $3.85 billion bid from Statewide Mobility Partners -- a joint venture between CINTRA of Spain and Macquarie Infrastructure Group of Australia -- expires in April and legislators had to get the authorizing legislation out of committee this week. Next week marks the deadline for approval by the full House.

The Ways and Means Committee made a few other changes to House Bill 1008.

The three losing bids now would be revealed sooner - when the lease is signed, not when a private operator takes control of the road. And the operating company would be prohibited from making political campaign contributions.

A move to tighten the state's eminent domain powers was dropped after state officials said it would make it impossible to use private financing to build a Interstate 69 connection between Indianapolis and Evansville.

Rep. John Aguilera, D-East Chicago, made an unsuccessful attempt to cancel a noncompete clause in the lease the prohibits the state from building more than 20 continuous miles of new east-west highway within 10 miles of the Toll Road.

Republicans voted against the amendment after Daniels' top aides said it likely would force the state to tear up all four lease bids it received last week.