By Eric Bradner, Evansville Courier & Press
INDIANAPOLIS - Indiana Democrats tacked legislation to jump-start a Warrick County tourism development onto their budget Monday as they advanced the spending plan out of a fiscal panel and on to the full House.
Developers want to build an indoor-outdoor museum and recreational facility called Village Earth on 272 acres of mining reclamation land south of Elberfield.
The nonprofit Hoosier Heritage Youth Foundation says the development near the Blue Grass Fish and Wildlife Area and in the new Interstate 69 corridor would have an educational component, with animatronic exhibits on the history of the area, an aquarium and a wind farm. The nonprofit foundation wants to surround Village Earth with a commercial-retail complex including two hotels with conference centers, several restaurants, a movie theater, retail stores and an indoor water attraction - all built by private developers.
The amendment added Monday allows the development to keep 80 percent of the sales tax collected there to pay back $157 million in bonds issued to finance the project. The other 20 percent would go to the state.
Identical legislation passed the Democratic-led House but failed in the Republican-controlled Senate during the regular session. A key backer is Rep. Russ Stilwell of Boonville, the No. 2-ranking Democrat in the House.
The amendment was wrapped into the one-year Democratic budget that the Ways and Means Committee approved on a 15-10 vote along party lines June 9. The House panel spent nearly six hours debating several changes, a few of which boost spending in some areas.
Here are some of the other changes the panel OK'd:
Citing concerns that some universities would be looking at drastic funding drops when the budget runs out, State Rep. Dennis Avery, D-Evansville, offered an amendment that says it's not just money that comes from the state's general fund, but also federal stimulus money, that makes up universities' base funding.
Avery said the amendment is necessary because the technical details of working stimulus money into this year's budget require some switches that shift state dollars away from base operating costs and toward building projects, thus dropping the state's share of base funding to artificially low levels.
Rep. Randy Borror, R-Fort Wayne, called the amendment "preposterous," and other Republicans were critical as well. Members of both parties have balked at building stimulus money into base funding levels because when those federal dollars run dry, the state won't be able to afford to make up the difference.
The panel rebuffed Gov. Mitch Daniels' plan to close a central Indiana home for troubled youths, amending the budget to include $10 million to keep the Indiana Soldiers' and Sailors' Children's Home, in Knightstown, open one more year.
Daniels' Republican administration last month announced plans to shutter the home in part because the $90,000-per-student price tag was too high. Officials said they would instead use the grounds for a National Guard academy for high school dropouts.
The amendment offered by Rep. Robert Cherry, R-Greenfield, and approved Monday would have the academy and the children's home share the 53-building campus.
Overall, Republicans unanimously turned down the Democratic budget, saying it spent $500 million more in one year than Daniels proposed spending in the first year of the more traditional two-year budget he unveiled earlier this month.
"I liken this budget to a credit card budget - spend now and pay later, and paying later will be a tax increase," said Rep. Jeff Espich of Uniondale, the top-ranking Republican on the fiscal panel.
Democrats say their budget boosts state spending on K-12 education by more than 2 percent and spares all school districts from funding cuts. It also would boost spending on universities and student financial aid. Democrats say it will leave $1 billion of the state's $1.3 billion surplus when it expires June 30, 2010.
That's how much Daniels wanted left over at the end of his two-year budget, which would end June 30, 2011. His fiscal aides say that since Democrats spend all available stimulus money in one year rather than two, extending the one-year budget for a second year would eat through almost all of what remains in the state's backup bank account.
The Democratic budget now heads to the full House, which Democrats control on a 52-48 divide and where Republicans have offered no signals that they will offer any votes in favor of the spending plan.