By Patrick Guinane, Times of Northwest Indiana
patrick.guinane@nwi.com
INDIANAPOLIS | Language to create a local income tax-backed bus and rail authority for Northwest Indiana has made it into the state budget bill, but it seems no one is happy with the result.
Reps. Chet Dobis, D-Merrillville, and Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, still were stewing Tuesday morning about proposed November 2009 referenda to decide whether voters in Lake, Porter, LaPorte and St. Joseph counties want to create the district. Both lawmakers insisted they had yet to see draft legislation showing how the referenda would be structured.
But Sen. Karen Tallian, D-Ogden Dunes, had. And she said she is "completely outraged."
According to Tallian, the budget bill, not yet available to the public, contains three poison pills:
The Gary/Chicago International Airport board would be allowed to privatize the facility without abiding by Indiana's 2005 public-private partnership law, which would require the private operator to pay a prevailing wage. Profits from the deal would go to Gary's general fund, placing no limitations on how they are spent.
Any two municipalities in Porter County could, by passing resolutions, override the Porter County Council's decision to withdraw from the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority and discontinue its $3.5 million annual dues.
The four counties - Lake, Porter, LaPorte and St. Joseph -- presumably would have to pay for special elections this November to decide whether to create the new bus and rail authority. And the legislation doesn't stipulate what happens if, for instance, Lake and LaPorte County voters opt to create the district and Porter and St. Joseph County voters do not.
Soliday agreed with Tallian's grievance, with both lawmakers hyperbolically questioning whether the new transit district would simply let the South Shore track go to rot in counties that do not opt in.
Tallian fumed that the "punitive" RDA language means, "The town of Malden and the town of Dune Acres could decide to join."
"It's just unreasonable," she said. "There's no reason to put that in there except that Ed Soliday is having a fight with (Porter County Commissioner) Bob Harper."
House Democrats have yet to sign off on the tentative budget accord reached Monday night, so there still is some fleeting hope that the region transit language could be cleaned up before the budget bill is printed and voted on, likely tonight.