Governor rants on spending

BY PATRICK GUINANE, Times of Northwest Indiana
pguinane@nwitimes.com

INDIANAPOLIS | Gov. Mitch Daniels continued to hammer legislators Friday for approving $15 million in annual film industry tax breaks, but he declined to lower the boom on a South Shore expansion bill that would cost the state nearly three times as much.

Shrinking state tax collections have spawned talk of scaling back the Republican governor's property tax relief plan. But Daniels instead scolded lawmakers to ditch spending plans similar to the Hollywood tax incentives passed Thursday.

"It would help if the Legislature would resist the temptation to throw money at a lot of other problems," Daniels said Friday. "There are a lot of bills floating around right now that would spend a lot of money we probably ought not spend until we see more clearly what the national economy is going to do."

Legislation authored by state Rep. Chet Dobis, D-Merrillville, would steer $42.7 million a year in state sales tax money to South Shore improvements, including proposed extensions to Lowell and Valparaiso. The governor said it was too early to say whether the state can pick up the commuter rail tab.

"You'd have to see the entire context of everything else that passed (the Legislature this year) to answer that," Daniels said. "I'll simply say that, at a time when we're facing a national economic slowdown --- now, Indiana is in better shape than any other state around us to deal with it -- we still have to be very, very careful."

The South Shore legislation, House Bill 1220, is scheduled for a Senate committee vote on Tuesday. But Senate Tax Chairman Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, has indicated he won't move the bill unless the state tax diversion, which would start in July 2009, is replaced with a local tax hike.