BY PATRICK GUINANE, Times of Northwest Indiana
pguinane@nwitimes.com
INDIANAPOLIS | Local legislators say the latest incarnation of a plan to lease the Indiana Toll Road shortchanges Northwest Indiana while obliterating attempts at regional unity.
The Republican-controlled General Assembly has spent the last month trying to iron out legislation that would allow Gov. Mitch Daniels to accept the $3.85 billion a Spanish-Australian consortium has offered in exchange for a 75-year lease.
Daniels, a first-term Republican, long has promised $100 million over 10 years for the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority, a Lake-Porter partnership charged with improving local transportation options and rehabbing the Lake Michigan shoreline.
Sen. Robert Meeks,, R-LaGrange, removed that entitlement last week and did the same for $100 million promised for economic development in northeast Indiana.
"Say in five years, we go into a deep recession and we don't have any money and schools are being cut, Medicaid is being cut, we have to lay people off," Meeks explained. "I'm still going to put $10 million in the RDA?"
Instead, each of the seven Toll Road counties would get $30 million. County councils could invest the money or spend it with oversight from county commissioners. For Northwest Indiana, the $60 million breaks down to $25 million for Porter County, $15 million for Lake County and $20 million for the RDA.
"I liked the guarantee of the $10 million for 10 years," said Sen. Earline Rogers, D-Gary.
Otherwise, the RDA would have to beg for future funds, and "Lake County has never faired as well as other counties," Rogers said.
Sending the money directly to the counties would further foster regional factionalism, suggested Rep. Chet Dobis, the Merrillville Democrat who helped create the RDA last year.
"That's nothing against the counties," he said. "But the RDA money and that Toll Road stuff originally was meant to go to regional development, not to supplement the general fund of any other taxing unit."
Meeks said the money would have to be used for economic development, but it's not clear whether counties could use the money to make their $3.5 million annual contributions to the RDA.
Either way, the Toll Road plan faces much more negotiation in the coming weeks.
"I think we'll be able to work that out," Sen. Vic Heinold, R-Kouts, said of the RDA money. "I think when it's all said and done, hopefully for my support, we're going to get our fair share."
Meanwhile, Sen. Karen Tallian, D-Ogden Dunes, said Indiana would be better off borrowing against future toll increases. Would she consider voting for Daniels' plan?
"As the way it stands right now, absolutely not," Tallian said.