INDIANAPOLIS | Officials and supporters of the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority made their case Thursday to the Senate's budget-writing committee for continued state funding to pay for expansion of the South Shore Line.
RDA CEO Bill Hanna asked the Senate Appropriations Committee for $7.5 million a year, along with a guarantee that funding will continue for the next 30 years.
He said the state support, combined with pledged local revenues in Lake and Porter counties, would enable the RDA to immediately borrow the money required to match the federal funds needed for a $591 million plan to extend the commuter rail line to Dyer, and related transit-oriented development along the existing South Shore Line.
Hanna explained that despite all of Indiana's tax and business climate advantages compared to Illinois, the region is not growing as fast as it should and could, because it lacks the necessary connections to Chicago — the nation's third-largest economy.
A state investment in the RDA and South Shore expansion, he said, would return nearly five times as much money back to the state as more Northwest Indiana residents take the train to Chicago and bring home and spend paychecks that are, on average, 40 percent higher than they'd earn doing the same work in Indiana.
"We need to do this. We need to turn the corner. We need to do it now, and we need to do it together," Hanna said. "This will be the project that we look back on and say ... this is really when we flipped the switch and turned the lights on for Northwest Indiana."
Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson, a Democrat, and Portage Mayor James Snyder, a Republican, both urged the panel to include RDA funding for South Shore expansion in the state budget it is set to release April 9.
"As we ask for your help to move forward, I think you're seeing a different type of Northwest Indiana. You hear 'one region' often; we're putting action to those words in what we're doing here," Snyder said. "Because the success of west Lake County, the success of Gary, the success of Hammond is the success of Portage.
"Abandoning this would be a disaster."
The RDA budget request also was endorsed by Chris White, publisher of The Times Media Co. and co-chairman of One Region; Mike Noland, general manager of the Northern Indiana Commuter Transit District, which operates the South Shore Line; Don Babcock of NIPSCO; and Ty Warner, executive director of the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission.
Several ministers associated with the Northwest Indiana Federation of Interfaith Organizations urged the committee to reject RDA funding unless the agency agrees to hire residents of the poorest region communities to work on RDA projects.
State Sen. Earline Rogers, D-Gary, said she has been talking with Hanna and Freeman-Wilson about setting a voluntary RDA goal of hiring at least 20 percent of project workers from region cities with high unemployment rates.
The committee chairman, state Sen. Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, was noncommittal — as is typical for him — on whether RDA funding will make it into the Senate budget.
"This is just a huge project for Indiana, let alone just for Northwest Indiana, but I felt it was important that we took the time to give them a full opportunity to present their case for budget consideration this year," Kenley said. "These are things that you need to evaluate and consider in order to arrive at a fair budget. So we will see where we go from here."
Kenley hinted that he may bypass Gov. Mike Pence's proposed Regional Cities Initiative and use those funds to directly support the RDA and other major proposed infrastructure projects in Evansville, Terre Haute and Indianapolis.
The effort to insert RDA funding in the Senate budget likely means House Bill 1618, which created a complicated matching state grant program to fund the RDA, will not advance.
A separate measure containing various RDA administrative reforms, House Bill 1398, is set for a Senate vote next week.
The RDA was created in 2005 and has received $10 million a year from the state through proceeds of the Indiana Toll Road lease. Those funds expire June 30.