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Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Ind. Gov't. - Continued coverage of Governor's Illiana and Commerce Connector proposals

Before the Indiana news, take a look at this story by Jeff Parrott of the South Bend Tribune that reports on a toll road project in Texas. Here is a quote:

One of the foreign firms leasing the Indiana Toll Road is drawing suspicion from some Texans after announcing plans to acquire a chain of small newspapers there.

Australia-based Macquarie Media Group last week said it will pay $80 million for American Consolidated Media, which publishes 40 community newspapers and shopping publications serving nine communities in Texas and Oklahoma.

Macquarie's sister company, Macquarie Infrastructure Group, last year joined with the Spanish conglomerate Cintra to lease the Indiana Toll Road for the next 75 years. Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels championed the deal, heralding the $3.8 billion in instant revenue it brought the state, although 60 percent of Hoosiers opposed it, according to opinion polls.

Likewise, several grass-roots groups in Texas are battling that state's Republican governor, Rick Perry, and his plan to convert existing freeways to toll roads and build a new toll road, the Trans-Texas Corridor, that would stretch from the Mexican border to Oklahoma.

Cintra and Macquarie Infrastructure Group, which also jointly operate a toll road in Toronto, are expected to be among many groups bidding on about $250 billion in Texas road work and toll road administration over the next decade.

Through eminent domain, the Trans-Texas Corridor, largely paralleling the existing Interstate 35, would force people to sell off their land for the project. Small papers in rural communities along the route have aggressively reported on opposition to that plan, said Sal Costello, founder of the nonprofit political action committee, Texas Toll Party.

"It sure would make it a lot easier for their business if they weren't being torn up in the newspapers every week," Costello said of Macquarie.

The newspaper chain includes five dailies, 19 weeklies and 16 "shoppers," which are comprised entirely of ads.

"The big (Texas) newspapers have written about (public opposition to the Trans-Texas Corridor), but the smaller newspapers have really dug into it," Costello said. "By them buying these papers in one fell swoop ... they'll be able to suggest to writers that they not dig into it. It's editorial independence we're talking about here."

Here are the stories on the Illiana since this updated ILB entry from Tuesday.

From the Evansville Courier & Press, dated 1/31/07, by Bryan Corbin, headlined "Change removes I-69 roadblock." It begins:

INDIANAPOLIS - A change made by a Democratic senator from Gary, Ind., gave a needed boost to the plan to fund the Interstate 69 extension through Southwestern Indiana.

The plan, Senate Bill 1, cleared its first hurdle Tuesday when the Senate Transportation Committee passed it 8-3.

To allow I-69 to be a freeway, not a tollway, its entire distance, Senate Bill 1 would bankroll the unfunded portion of I-69 construction, using proceeds from leasing and operating a privatized toll road through the Indianapolis suburbs.

Specifically, Senate Bill 1 transfers the tolling authority from I-69 to two new privatized toll roads the governor has proposed: the Illiana Expressway in northwestern Indiana and the Indiana Commerce Connector around the east and south sides of Indianapolis. That bill will be heard next by the full state Senate. * * *

The governor's proposed Illiana Expressway would sweep through Porter and Lake counties, connecting Michigan City, Ind., to the Chicago suburbs. Rogers said northwestern Indiana legislators take no position on whether the Commerce Connector should be built in central Indiana to fund I-69. But since northwestern Indiana officials have been pushing for Illiana for 25 years, they likely would oppose using toll proceeds from Illiana to fund I-69 in the Southwestern corner of the state, Rogers said. "I'd hate to have to make that case in northwest Indiana," she said.

From the NWI Times, dated 1/30/07, by Keith Benman, headlined "NIRPC and Forum: Illiana route search comes first. Groups stop short of Daniels plan, for now." Some quotes:
PORTAGE | Two leading development groups on Monday endorsed important first steps in getting the Illiana Expressway built, but stopped short of giving blanket approval to the governor's drive to make it a private toll road.

The Northwest Indiana Forum and the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission both endorsed legislation that would authorize a feasibility study and corridor protection for the Indiana portion of the 63-mile roadway.

"We feel this study gives us the greatest opportunity to flush out all the facts needed to do a major infrastructure project of this type," Rex Richards, Greater Valparaiso Chamber of Commerce president, said.

"We need to make sure we separate emotion from facts."

The study would come first, said Leigh Morris, NIRPC chair and City of LaPorte Mayor. If it is determined the expressway is needed, then corridor protection would be put in place.

Morris, who serves as NIRPC chairman, started the meeting by crumpling up and throwing away a map portraying an Illiana Expressway route as a broad blue swath cutting through Lowell and up to Michigan City.

"I want to make certain that no one in this room believes that the map ... you've seen in various publications, bears any relationship to reality," Morris said.

That map has alarmed residents of some communities as well as residents of rural areas.

Though NIRPC and Forum representatives at Monday's presentation were careful to say they were only endorsing the study and corridor protection, their enthusiasm for getting the Illiana Expressway built was obvious.

From the Gary Post-Tribune, dated 1/31/07, by Christin Nance, headlined "Gov. Daniels: No support, no Illiana Expressway." Some quotes:
Gov. Mitch Daniels says he is simply responding to the will of the people when it comes to the proposed Illiana Expressway.

"I've made 57 trips, I think it is, to Lake County alone ... I guarantee you on two-thirds of these trips somebody asked me about this idea," Daniels said. "I have no interest in doing it if it's not seen as in the long-term interest of the region." * * *

The bill that provides for a feasibility study made its way out of a General Assembly committee on Tuesday. Daniels said it contains an amendment that creates a legislative review committee to oversee the transaction and the selection of the route.

The study will examine the 12-mile swath on an Indiana Department of Transportation map as well as areas farther south.

"Nobody has any fixed idea about where the road should be so that it is the least disruptive, least expensive, least environmentally difficult," Daniels said.

"It needs to be shaped by people who, we hope, will benefit from it and who will live with whatever improvement is made."

From the NWI Times, dated 1/31/07, by Patrick Guinane, headlined "Lawmakers add advisory panels to Illiana process." Some quotes:
Legislation paving the way for an Illiana Expressway made it past an initial roadblock after some tweaks Tuesday, but Democrats say the measure still grants too much power to Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels.

The Senate Transportation Committee advanced the legislation on an 8-3 vote, with Sen. Earline Rogers, D-Gary, joining Sen. Vic Heinold, R-Kouts, and six other Republicans.

Before the vote, the committee adopted a Rogers amendment that would create legislative review committees to advise Daniels and the Indiana Department of Transportation on planning and construction of the Illiana and another proposed downstate tollway. Democrats, both locally and at the Statehouse, argued that oversight provision is too weak and should instead require Daniels to go back to the General Assembly for another vote building the roads.

"If the Legislature doesn't have oversight it means nothing," said Porter County Commissioner Bob Harper. "They're giving away their control."

Daniels has insisted that public input will guide the future of the projects, and Heinold and Rogers say they take the governor at his word.

"I do trust that INDOT and governor's office will make decisions that will be in the interests of my constituents and in the interests of the state," Rogers said.

Daniels sent Heinold a letter Tuesday promising to include the senator's route suggestions in a forthcoming study of the Illiana Expressway. In a letter Monday, Heinold had recommended the state hold the route south of Hebron and Kouts and have it touch Starke County before arching north to end east of LaPorte.

An exact route is probably at least three years away. But preliminary plans have the highway starting at Interstate 57 in Illinois and passing between Cedar Lake and Lowell on its way toward I-65 and I-94. The governor, in Gary Tuesday for an unrelated event, welcomed Rogers' plan to create an advisory panel.

"I think its a very good idea," Daniels said. "This decision really rests with the people of the area and their elected representatives."

Republican Senate leadership had not yet decided Tuesday whether to send the tollway legislation, Senate Bill 1, to another committee for more hearings or speed up the process by bringing it before the full Senate as soon as next week.

Heinold said he anticipates bipartisan support from the full Senate. But Democrats signaled opposition, primarily for the Indiana Commerce Connector, a tollway south and east of Indianapolis that Daniels proposed in November.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 31, 2007 05:29 PM
Posted to Indiana Government