By PAULENE POPARAD

Cautioning that Northwest Indiana’s current steel woes may be just the beginning, not the end, Hammond Mayor Duane Dedelow won support Thursday from regional officials to change the mission and make-up of the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission.

Unanimously endorsed was a shift from NIRPC’s current metropolitan planning organization status to a more broad-based and multi-focused Council of Governments (COG.)

The same NIRPC initiative, which needs authorization from the Indiana General Assembly, failed in a Senate committee in the last legislative session.

Dedelow said NIRPC -- which represents Lake, Porter and LaPorte counties -- needs to evolve more now than ever, and the General Assembly reconvenes next month. “Time dictates we act expediently,” he stressed.

Dedelow said creation of a Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) in Lake County last week shows diverse interests can come together for the greater good, something a COG would foster. Towns like Dune Acres, Burns Harbor and Lowell not now represented on NIRPC would have a seat at the COG table, he noted, as would members of the area’s private and non-profit sectors.

As NIRPC’s representative on the National Association of Regional Councils, Dedelow said he’s seen how COGs deal with problems in a more efficient way, and how they can address housing and economic development as well as transportation, the latter being NIRPC’s main focus.

When the local steel industry declined in the 1980s, Dedelow told NIRPC’s Full Commission membership, regional leaders talked then of developing a long-term strategy for economic recovery. “We have not. Shame on us if we don’t develop a plan for economic recovery down the road.”

Dedelow said Gary Mayor Scott King hopes to organize a meeting soon to start that process and urged those present to participate.

After the meeting, NIRPC Deputy Director Dan Gardner said, “Rather than a better time, it’s a worse time” to try to get the COG legislation through the General Assembly, which already is committed to tax restructuring, burdened with a state budget deficit, and bound to consider a bail-out for Porter County governments affected by the Bethlehem Steel bankruptcy.

Gas tax hike?

NIRPC members also voted unanimously to review a proposal by the Build Indiana Council, a highway-industry trade association, to increase the state gasoline by 10 cents per gallon.

At its current 15 cents, said Dennis Faulkenberg, the council’s spokesman, Indiana’s gas tax is the lowest of surrounding states by at least four cents. Indiana’s last gas-tax hike was one cent in 1988, and all but two states have raised their gas taxes since Indiana’s last increase, said Faulkenberg.

If Indiana ups its gas tax, he added, badly needed funds could be diverted to communities for local roads and streets which are deteriorating because of lack of money. “It’s a funding crisis for highways. That’s pretty strong language, but it is.”

Faulkenberg predicted that in 15 years Lake County’s traffic congestion will expand into Porter County if it doesn’t have more money to anticipate those needs and provide for them now.

NIRPC member and Porter County Commissioner Larry Sheets said his Highway Department expects to loose $1.5 million, necessitating that it use the $600,000 revenue from a cable television franchise fee for roads, money that could be used to offset operating expenses if more road funding were available.

Only 24 of Indiana’s 92 counties have a local wheel tax, said Faulkenberg, but several more counties are looking at implementation. “It’s coming to that. It’s almost a move of desperation for some counties.” NIRPC and Porter County Council member Carole Knoblock asked how a wheel tax is enacted. Faulkenberg said it would have to be adopted by June 30 to start realizing revenue in January, 2003.

NIRPC Chairman Marlow Harmon, a LaPorte County Commissioner, questioned whether counties that adopt a wheel tax would receive the same disbursement of state highway funding as non-wheel tax counties.

The Build Indiana Council unsuccessfully pushed for a state gas-tax package last year that would have raised $330 million, and Faulkenberg said it will be an even more uphill battle in this year’s contentious legislative session. Nevertheless, he urged NIRPC members to document their road needs, share that with local legislators, and inform the public what declining roads will mean to their safety and mobility.

Lake RTA backed

NIRPC members also unanimously endorsed a motion, seconded by NIRPC member and Chesterton Clerk-treasurer Gayle Polakowski, to support needed legislative action now being drafted to transition Lake County’s RTA Committee to a tax-levying RTA will broad powers to address transportation needs.

Dr. Dennis Rittenmeyer, president of Calumet College of St. Joseph and RTA committee chairman, said new estimates show the 1 percent Lake County food and beverage tax endorsed by the Lake County Council to fund the RTA would raise $6.2 million, $1 million more than originally estimated.

The Lake RTA has the ability to be expanded into other counties to foster and fund transportation opportunities, including extension of the South Shore commuter railroad to Valparaiso. “Jumping in a car to go wherever you want to go is really foolish thinking,” said Rittenmeyer.

Also Thursday, NIRPC staffer Bill Brown said Indiana is preparing to ask the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to redesignate Lake and Porter counties as attainment of the one-hour ozone standard. Attainment, said Brown, means “we have cleaner air people can breathe easier.”

Redesignation could take 12-18 months. Lake and Porter are still non-attainment of the eight-hour ozone standard.

If redesignated for the one-hour standard, residents here still will be required to have vehicles emissions tested, use reformulated fuels and have transportation projects rated for air-quality conformity. However, some restrictions may be eased for industry and economic development, said Brown, as long as they don’t cause the one-hour standard to be violated.

In other matters, NIRPC’s annual meeting was set for January 17; David Hollenbeck was retained as NIRPC’s legal counsel; and the next meeting of the new Watershed Management advisory group will be Jan. 28 at NIRPC.

Posted 12/17/2001