By Patrick Guinane, Times of Northwest Indiana
patrick.guinane@nwi.com
INDIANAPOLIS | With time running short in the legislative session, Northwest Indiana lawmakers are betting they can bring home a teaching hospital and land-based casino for Gary and deliver a better public transit system for the entire region.
Rep. Chet Dobis, D-Merrillville, and Sen. Earline Rogers, D-Gary, pitched a plan Thursday that would allow one of Gary's two lakefront casinos to move to the southern edge of the city, near the Borman Expressway and Interstate 65.
Any increase in gaming taxes generated by the move would be put toward building a teaching and trauma care hospital in Gary, extending South Shore commuter rail lines to Lowell -- and perhaps Valparaiso -- and redeveloping the Lake Michigan shoreline.
The plans now tie in with a bill that also would pave the way for a regional transportation district that would fund transportation projects over a four-county area.
"I think the most important thing is the teaching hospital because of the number of jobs and the (health) impact it will have," Rogers said. "I think it's a package that could really signal the turnaround for the whole of Northwest Indiana."
Dobis and Rogers, who share more than six decades of legislative experience, acknowledged the difficulty of pulling off such a behemoth deal ahead of Wednesday's adjournment deadline. But another veteran lawmaker remained confident Thursday.
"It will all fall in place before we leave here on the 29th," predicted Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary.
Other influential players aren't so sure.
Rep. Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City, worried about what a land-based Gary casino might do to his hometown's Blue Chip Casino, where revenues dropped nearly a third since Four Winds Casino opened roughly 10 miles away in New Buffalo, Mich.
Rep. Trent Van Haaften, D-Mount Vernon, said a "shinier, new facility" closer to major interstates likely would doom Gary's remaining lakefront riverboat, potentially setting off a scramble to move that license, too.
Van Haaften, the House point-person on gaming, said the state probably should take more time to study the issues of expanding land-based gambling and moving casinos within what many consider to be a saturated market.
Dobis pitched the proposal as the sort of self-help downstate legislators constantly prescribe for the region.
"We have severe (economic) problems in Northwest Indiana but specifically in Gary," Dobis told members of a House-Senate conference committee. "If Gary dies, so does Lake County. And if Lake County dies, so does Indiana. ... We are trying to help ourselves with this legislation."
The casino plan overshadowed changes Dobis pitched to the underlying legislation, which would create a local income-tax funded bus and commuter rail authority for Lake, Porter, LaPorte and St. Joseph counties.
Dobis proposed one cumulative referendum -- instead of four -- to decide if voters want to create the transit district. And he wants region mayors -- not county officials -- to lead the agency's governing board.