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Regional transportation authority dead in northern Indiana
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Voters in St. Joseph and Porter Counties voted on a proposal that would have create a regional transportation authority with the power to levy an income tax and expand rail and bus services from Hammond to South Bend. The language from the Porter County version reads:
"Shall there be created the Northern Indiana Regional Transportation District under IC 8-24 to provide a regional rail system serving, Lake, Porter, LaPorte, and St. Joseph counties and regional bus public transportation system serving Lake and Porter Counties with Porter County becoming a member of the district?"
According to WNDU-TV, voters in St. Joseph County defeated the measure: 19,640 (95%) no to 1,053 (5%) yes, with a 10% turnout. LaPorte and Lake Counties didn’t bother putting it on their ballots, although were required by state law, partly due to the cost. In St. Joseph, the cost was estimated to be less than $40,000 using paper ballots.
As a former Lake County resident and rider of the South Shore, I could see a lot of benefit of having an extended train line. It would have been nice to hop on a train in the south part of the county to go to the Chicago. The Amtrak in Dyer was too expensive and ran too infrequently for me to get to my job in Chicago back then. I ended up driving US-30 over to IL-394, and then up to the Calumet (now Bishop Ford) to get into the city. Part of my motivation to move to Hammond was to get closer to the South Shore. Living in Hammond was much cheaper than in Illinois. It was a great deal, as long as someone else paid for part of it.
The measure would have allowed the district to raise income taxes by one-quarter of one-percent to generate funding. St. Joseph County Republicans organized a push to defeat the measure.
From an interview with WSBT-TV, Indiana State Representative Ryan Dvorak (D-South Bend) explained the motivation for the proposal.
“This whole idea of a Regional Transportation Authority district with taxing authority was sort of created by a couple of legislators from Lake County that were interested in finding funding for an expansion of the South Shore. What the Senate decided to do is allow for this idea to go into the budget bill, but require that it be presented as a referendum question for the voters. I'm pretty sure that was done with the intention of killing it all together.”
In the end, it took 19,000 people who live in or near South Bend to tell two legislators three counties away, “don’t tax us for your train.” Of course, this is the same week 120,000 revised property tax bills due in December were sent out to residents in St. Joseph County. With a 10% turnout at the polls, how do you think they would have voted?
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