BY KEITH BENMAN, Times of Northwest Indiana
kbenman@nwitimes.com
Two years of deal-making stretching from Chicago City Hall to the Hoosier Heartland will result in $20 million being dropped on the Gary/Chicago International Airport today.
Gov. Mitch Daniels will hand the money over to the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority, which will hand it off to the airport for expansion of its main runway -- a move airport officials say will attract airlines.
The governor also will stick a ceremonial shovel in the ground to get the digging started.
Just how the $20 million for the 1,900-foot runway extension suddenly appeared in Daniels' Major Moves road-building legislation in March remains a mystery. But it is critical to the project, as $57.8 million in federal funding cannot be used for some of the project's key phases.
"The Indiana General Assembly can be a comic place at times," State Sen. Earline Rogers, D-Gary, said this week, while providing few other details about the wrangling over the airport money.
The $20 million appeared in the Senate version of the bill at the 11th hour of the General Assembly's 2005 session, not long after $80 million in RDA money had been stripped out.
In the end, the RDA ended up with both the $20 million for the airport and $80 million more for all its projects.
"I said a green light is a vote for the governor, and a red light is a vote against the governor," Democrat Rogers said she told key Republicans on the committee working out compromises on the bill.
That dictum from the governor to restore all funds was prompted by an emergency meeting in Indianapolis between then-Gary Mayor Scott King and the governor, with airport officials in tow.
A year before that, King had taken Chicago Mayor Richard Daley to Indianapolis to meet with Daniels in the same kind of closed-door meeting.
"He (Daley) talked about how he thought the RDA was important for the airport, and the airport was important for air transportation in Chicago," RDA executive director Tim Sanders said this week when asked about the meeting.
Success at Chicago's "third airport," as Daley is fond of calling Gary, could also conveniently spell defeat for U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.'s proposed Abraham Lincoln National Airport at Peotone.
With Daniels' backing, the RDA legislation was passed on the last hour of the last day of the 2005 session -- the same day Daley and the governor had their chat. It was part and parcel to the same bill that resulted in approval for a new football stadium for the Indianapolis Colts.
Daley had a chance to return the favor for Daniels when he appeared at the Gary airport in January of this year and spoke out in favor of privatizing the Indiana Toll Road. He held up the $1.85 billion Chicago Skyway privatization as a model.
"Our highest bidder has met and possibly exceeded our expectations in living up to the letter and spirit of this agreement," Daley told a gaggle of Chicago media outlets and Northwest Indiana officials that day at the airport.
Afterward, local politicians and business leaders lined up to have their photos taken with the Democratic mayor of the Windy City.
The $3.8 billion that was raised in the subsequent lease of the Indiana Toll Road became the source of the $100 million in RDA money.
Airport director Chris Curry and RDA executive director Tim Sanders said Daley's appearances at key points over the past two years were "important," but gave few new details of his involvement when asked this week.
Somewhere along the line, it was also arranged that $9.5 million from a passenger head tax at O'Hare and Midway airports would be directed to the Gary runway expansion.