INDIANAPOLIS - Consideration of amendments to the governor's controversial transportation proposal will be considered today, the final day for changes.
House Bill 1008, which allows the administration to lease the Indiana Toll Road, was eligible for amendments Tuesday, but the Senate sponsor, Sen. Robert Meeks, R-LaGrange, opted to delay the debate.
No amendments had been publicly posted as of late Tuesday, but Meeks said he expected only "minor tweaking" to the bill today. He said he wants to return language that enables Gov. Mitch Daniels to construct the Interstate 69 extension as a privately run toll road once the House and Senate sponsors sit down to hammer out a compromise in a conference committee.
"They're reinserting those (provisions) back in at conference committee," he said.
A Senate committee also amended the bill, dubbed Major Moves, to bar a privately run toll road from running through Perry Township on the south side of Indianapolis. If that provision remains, it would mean the I-69 extension, if built as a toll road, would have to be moved outside the 1,000-foot corridor the federal government has approved and which the state's transportation department says could cause a three-year delay because environmental studies would have to be redone.
The Senate didn't take up the bill Tuesday, even though hundreds gathered at a Statehouse rally to support the bill, including close to 300 who traveled from the Evansville area to specifically push to get the language that would allow the governor to build I-69 as a privately run toll road.
"There is no other plan and there isn't going to be," Daniels said. "You're either for this plan or you're against our future."
The potential of landing funding for I-69 through House Bill 1008 is winning the plan some Democratic support, despite the fact that Democrats in the House and Senate have criticized and voted against the bill.
Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel drove to the rally in part out of concern about the current form of the bill.
"This bill as it stands now is problematic with regard to the future of I-69," Weinzapfel said. "We need to see legislation that is going to fund I-69 and get it built sooner rather than later."
He said if the I-69 language is included, he would support the plan, despite concerns raised by other Democrats about privatization. He said he saw the fight now as an internal Republican tussle between Senate leaders and the governor's office.
"The bottom line is we want to see I-69 built - if that means as a private toll road, I'm willing to support that," he said.
Fellow Democratic Mayor Don Bowling from Loogootee, Ind., addressed the crowd and stirred up I-69 backers with his fiery oratory.
"Our part of the state has always been neglected," Bowling said. "We've put up with improved buffalo trails long enough."
And he called on Democratic legislators to back House Bill 1008.
"There has never been a time when partisan politics have been more wrong than on this issue," he said. "We cannot stand by and see I-69 sacrificed for partisan politics."