By ANNIE GOELLER, Daily Journal of Johnson County staff writer
The governor is open to changes in the planning and testing phases of a proposed toll road, he said Friday.
Gov. Mitch Daniels has invited lawmakers to set requirements for the planning process of the Indiana Commerce Connector. In a news conference Friday, he said that so far he and legislators have had great discussions, and he was open to their suggestions about requirements to approve the beltway.
Setting those requirements likely means changes to the proposed bill that would allow a private company to build and maintain the beltway and collect tolls.
Legislators would be able to require certain information, such as a detailed route, or set guidelines for the process, such as compensation for landowners.
Without meeting the requirements, the state could not make an agreement with a private company to build and maintain the toll road.
Changes could mean that legislators will spend more time debating and discussing the bill during this year's legislative session.
Daniels is confident the bill will be passed during the 2007 session and has no intentions of backing away from his proposal, said Betsy Burdick, the governor's deputy chief of staff. Burdick did not speak at the news conference.
He is not discouraged by initial responses during public meetings about a toll road through five Central Indiana counties, she said.
Feedback gathered in those meetings will help lawmakers raise questions and make changes to the legislation to address people's concerns, she said.
Legislators who met with Daniels this week talked about some of those issues.
One example is the committee that reviews the beltway as the project progresses. The current legislation says the legislative budget committee will perform reviews. Lawmakers could change that to a different group or create a committee, Burdick said.
Local legislators listed ideas including ways to compensate landowners for their property and getting a specific and detailed route before allowing private companies to bid on the road.
The entire process to study, approve and build the beltway will not be completed during this legislative session, said Jane Jankowski, spokeswoman for the governor.
And the governor said this bill will be different from others.
Daniels compared the project to his Major Moves proposal last year, that when approved gave the state permission to lease the northern Indiana toll road to a private company.
In that case, the road was already built and the state was ready to make a deal with a company, he said.
With the toll road and the Illiana Expressway in northwest Indiana, which are packaged together in the same bill, neither project is built and the state doesn't have an offer from a company wanting to operate the roads, he said.
The difference means that legislators will spend time this session talking about the process of approving the beltway.
Daniels said he is set on his proposal for the Indiana Commerce Connector, among his other top ideas, and that he did not propose any with the notion they could fail.
"That's not the way I operate. I'm deadly serious about all these ideas," he said.
"I'm realistic enough to know that particularly if you try as many things as we tend to try that you won't bat 1,000, but that doesn't mean that we're not very sincere," Daniels said.
Franklin College reporter Drew Stegman contributed to this report.