BY PAT GUINANE AND KEITH BENMAN,
The Times of Northwest Indiana
INDIANAPOLIS | House Republicans offered a final carrot to commuters today, announcing they will add a 10-year toll freeze to Gov. Mitch Daniels' plan to lease the Indiana Toll Road.
Residents of Lake, Porter, LaPorte, St. Joseph, Elkhart, Lagrange and Steuben counties would continue to pay the current toll rates until 2016.
Passenger cars from outside the seven-county area still will see a trip across the entire 157-mile stretch increase to $8 from $4.65 later this year.
Local residents will face those higher rates after 10 years, plus the possibility of future hikes of at least 2 percent annually.
Some Republican officials in Northwest Indiana, including Valparaiso Mayor Jon Costas, have been pitching the plan to state legislators as a way to overcome opposition to the plan in the northern tier.
Costas was one of three local mayors who joined Chicago Mayor Richard Daley at the Gary/Chicago International Airport on Tuesday for a pep rally promoting the lease and what it can do for Northwest Indiana.
The mayors, who also included Gary Mayor Scott King and Crown Point Mayor Dan Klein, did not mention the Republican proposal when they were at the microphones. But in answer to a question later, Costas said commuters should get a break on tolls.
"That would be icing on the cake and take the sting out the fact much of the tolls are paid by people here," Costas said.
The 10-year rate freeze would be realized through the use of electronic toll transponders, similar to the I-Pass system in Illinois.
Lawmakers said it would take time to install electronic tolling, so, for the first year, commuters would have to pay the higher tolls -- but would be allowed to deduct the expense from state income taxes.
The toll discount was announced as part of a final compromise that will allow all 52 House Republicans to vote for Toll Road plan. The discount would cost the state $150 million over the 10 years.
The GOP also announced a $100 million subsidy for a Northeast Indiana Regional Development Authority they plan to create.
The House Republican unanimity renders House Democrats largely irrelevant. At most, the Democrats still could engineer a walkout, which could delay or prevent action on House Bill 1008, the legislation to authorize the Toll Road lease.
Daniels, a Republican, needs both the House and Senate to approve the legislation before he can collect the $3.85 billion a Spanish-Australian consortium has offered for a 75-year lease of the Toll Road. Republicans control the Senate by a much wider margin than their 52-48 advantage in the House.
The governor spoke this morning to a crowd of more than 200 gathered for a Statehouse rally.
"When you get upstairs, there are some great people -- not everyone meets that description," Daniels told the crowd, which included many union workers.
"Our job is to put a little courage in those folks," Daniels said.
"The jobs and the future of Indiana is too important to be left to the politicians."
At least three busloads of union carpenters and operating engineers from Northwest Indiana were at the rally to support Major Moves, the governor’s 10-year, $10.6 billion transportation plan.
"It looks like it could generate a lot of work for all of us in the long term," said Ron Simko, a Crown Point resident and member of Carpenters Local 1005 in Merrillville.
The House plans to consider amendments to House Bill 1008 today. The final bill must be voted over to the Senate by Thursday.