BY PATRICK GUINANE, Times of Northwest Indiana
pguinane@nwitimes.com
INDIANAPOLIS | If Northwest Indiana opposes leasing out the Indiana Toll Road, it surely didn't show on Wednesday.
No one -- not a single interest group, local official or concerned citizen -- from Lake, Porter or LaPorte counties came to the Capitol to speak against Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels' plan to leverage more than $2 billion by turning the Toll Road over to a private firm.
That's not to say the 75-year lease deal is without its detractors.
"Nearly 90 percent of my (constituent) surveys have come back against it," said Rep. Chet Dobis, D-Merrillville.
"Most of the comments I got were on the public-private lease and on the possibility of selling it to a foreign entity."
About a dozen opponents from other parts of the state came to Indianapolis to testify against the plan during Wednesday's meeting of the House Ways and Means Committee.
"The governor has asked us to be open-minded about this," said William Boyd of Bloomfield, in southwest Indiana. "I think the governor is so open-minded that his brains fell out."
Boyd's beef is with the proposed Interstate 69 extension Daniels wants to build from Indianapolis to Evansville. That road would be built as a privately operated tollway. But Daniels needs $859 million from the northern Toll Road lease to subsidize the I-69 construction.
The Toll Road lease is the linchpin for Major Moves, the governor's 10-year transportation plan. The seven counties surrounding the Toll Road have been promised about $1 billion, or 34 percent of the net lease proceeds. That won't come without a price.
Commuter tolls will nearly double later this year, while truck rates will climb substantially over four years. Every year from 2010 until 2081, the private Toll Road operator would be allowed to raise tolls by at least 2 percent.
"My 7-year-old granddaughter will be able to drive on the new road, but she'll have to pay for that until she is 82 years old," said Terry Miller, public policy director for the Chamber of Commerce of St. Joseph County.
Some opponents launched environmental criticisms over the I-69 project, while others echoed legislative concerns that the governor's plan is simply too much, too fast.
"If you're in a danger zone on the highway, you don't speed up. You slow down," said Thomas Tokarski of Stanford, in southwest Indiana.
To some extent, those criticisms fell on deaf ears. At least six lawmakers -- nearly all Republicans -- skipped all or most of Wednesday's hearing. A day earlier, the full committee sat through a three-hour session led by the governor's top aides.
Wednesday's hearing also included testimony from more than two-dozen supporters, including Toyota and other manufacturers, labor unions, and private contractors. That included Kevin Kelly, president of Walsh & Kelly, a paving firm with offices in Griffith and South Bend.
"We're a company that, historically, has done work on the Toll Road," Kelly said. "We are not concerned about a private entity having control of the Toll Road."