Great Lakes Basin Transportation has provided the information a federal board said was lacking in its application to build a 261-mile freight train line across three Midwestern states, including financial documents that show zero net income for 2016 and $151 in assets.
The application was due to the Surface Transportation Board by May 2, but the board later issued a decision that Great Lakes had to reveal its stockholders and fill in other gaps in its application.
Great Lakes released its stockholders June 9, despite its request to keep those names confidential. The rest of the additional information was provided to the federal board by Thursday's deadline.
In addition to details on legal ads published in newspapers in Wisconsin, Illinois and Northwest Indiana, and a list of officials in each of those states who received its application, Jim Wilson, vice chairman of Great Lakes provided an income statement for 2016.
Great Lakes officials claimed in their application that, "Because GLBT has no business operations or revenue, it is not filing a current balance sheet or income statement."
According to the document filed Thursday, Great Lakes had total investment revenue from stock sales of $401,544. Expenses, including $312,828 for consultants and $66,360 for legal fees, totaled $401,545.
A balance sheet showed total assets of $151, and liabilities for 2016 of $802,000.
Officials with Great Lakes have said the $2.8 billion freight train line, which would start in Milton, Wis., and end in LaPorte County, would be privately funded.
The list of stockholders provided earlier this month showed that Frank Patton, founder and chairman of Great Lakes, holds more than 87 percent of the interest in the firm, and a handful of the other top stockholders are on Great Lakes' board.
Mike Blaszak, an attorney for Great Lakes and also one of its stockholders, declined to comment on the firm's financial statements.
"We filed it as requested by the STB and I'm not going to comment any further," he said.
Great Lakes officials asked the transportation board to put a halt to an environmental impact statement on the proposal earlier this year, until their application was filed. That remains on hold.
The future of that statement remains unclear.
"Right now the agency is going to be looking at the reply that came in. The only thing that's in concrete is, they're looking at the response," said Dennis Watson, spokesman for the Surface Transportation Board. "I don't know how they'll respond."
According to the transportation board's June 2 decision, if the board accepts the application, it would issue a procedural schedule establishing new deadlines for comments and replies addressing the transportation merits of the proposal.
The line would cut through southern Lake and Porter counties, and opponents in all three states have said they were concerned about loss of farmland, drainage woes and public safety.
Bob Cauffman, president of Residents Against the Invasion of Land by Eminent Domain, an opposition group based in Porter County, questioned the financial statements provided by Great Lakes and how officials would meet their financial obligations. That includes millions of dollars for the environmental impact statement.
"If investment (revenue) is only $400,00, where is the money coming from?" he said, adding RAILED will have an expert analyze the figures and provide a statement to the federal board.