Legislation to send $42 million in state economic development money to Michiana cleared another hurdle Monday but the race isn’t over.
The Regional Cities Initiative money is now tied to the Senate’s road funding bill, which has been a major point of controversy this session.
The Indiana House Ways and Means Committee voted 13-8 to fully fund the Regional Cities Initiative grants, in a process that has proven more uncertain than many people expected when Gov. Mike Pence came to town in December and announced approval of a grant request from St. Joseph, Elkhart and Marshall county area officials.
Rep. David Niezgodski, D-South Bend, the only South Bend area representative on Ways and Means, was the only Democrat out of eight Democrats on the committee to vote for the funding. Three Republicans voted no, and two Democrats didn’t vote.
“Sometimes you’ve got to do things that aren’t easy,” Niezgodski said. “To me, protecting Regional Cities funding was important. There’s some very high-stakes gamesmanship being played between the House, Senate and the governor. That’s the House’s latest move in carrying this forward.”
The measure, technically called Senate Bill 333, next moves to the full House for a vote. Niezgodski said he expects that to happen on the yet-to-de-determined last day of the session, or perhaps the second-to-last day.
The Regional Cities money initially had its own Senate bill but it died for lack of support, so lawmakers attached it as an amendment to the Senate’s road funding bill.
House Republican leaders have pushed a roads bill that would raise the state's gasoline tax by 4 cents per gallon and add $1 to the tax on a pack of cigarettes. Pence would rather finance road maintenance and construction by borrowing money with Indiana's good credit rating and spending some of the state's budget reserves.