Truth
What started out as a border dispute is now a financial concession to literally hundreds of thousands of motorists across the Eastern quarter of the United States.
And Hoosiers will be paying the bill.
The Indiana Toll Road Oversight board unanimously approved the extension of a 40 percent discount to all electronic toll customers on the E-ZPass system Thursday. And while the discussion centered around giving Illinois residents using the I-Pass the discount, what ultimately happened is anyone with an E-ZPass from any of 11 states in the northern United States will receive the discount.
If it sounds generous, it is. When the Indiana General Assembly approved Gov. Mitch Daniels' deal to lease the toll road for 75 years to a private consortium, a provision authored by State Rep. Tim Neese, R-Elkhart, also passed that gave Hoosiers a 40 percent toll road discount for 10 years. The money to pay ITR Concession Co. for the profit it would lose because of the discount came out of the $3.8 billion lease payment to the state.
The State Budget Agency said Thursday afternoon that the extension to other E-ZPass users will cost $190 million over the next nine years. According to the Indiana Department of Transportation, however, the $250 million originally set aside for the benefit will still cover the new users. We don't see how that's possible.
Hoosiers who have Illinois' I-Pass receive that state's 50 percent toll discount. Reciprocity among the two neighboring states makes sense. Illinois was prepared to revoke the I-Pass transponders of 90,000 of Hoosiers who have them without some concession. That would have been a mistake.
However, the oversight board went too far in giving the discount to residents of states not adjacent to Indiana. Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire only give discounts to residents of their own states.
E-ZPass also includes New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. That's a lot of potential users.
Extending the discount to Illinois residents was the right thing to do, but there's no question the oversight board overstepped its reach going further than that. They made a decision that will have a significant financial impact on the state of Indiana and therefore its taxpayers without legislative or public input.