With a sigh of relief, county officials were glad to see the public finally take a stand in Tuesday’s special election for the Northwest Indiana Regional Transportation District referendum.

The Porter County Voters Registration office reported 15,375 registered voters in the county showed up for the off-year election -- or a turnout of 15 percent --- with 12,255 voting no on the creation of the RTD and 3,122 voting yes, roughly an 80/20 percent ratio. Voter Registration Democrat director Kathy Kozuszek said she hopes lawmakers downstate will consider the public’s opinion.

“The public has spoken and this should send the lawmakers a clear message saying this is what we want in Porter County,” Kozuszek said.

A provision added to the state’s budget bill late in this year’s session of the Indiana General Assembly required the counties of Lake, Porter, LaPorte and St. Joseph to hold the referendums on Tuesday. The proposed district would have created a regional bus public transportation system in Lake and Porter counties and also overseen the South Shore commuter service with possible spurs into Valparaiso and Lowell. The district would have also had the authority to impose a new county income tax of up to .25 percent in each county.

Out of Porter County’s 126 precincts, only five came out in favor of the RTD. Two of these were in the Duneland area, including Westchester Precinct 15, where the “yes” votes dwarfed the “no’s” by a margin of 118 to 14, or nearly 90 percent in support. Another anomaly was in Pine Precinct 2, where 175 voted in support and 50 voted against. The results were also lopsided in Porter Precinct 6, where 67 voted yes and 14 voted no.

Sundae Kubacki, Republican director of Porter County Voter Registration, told the Chesterton Tribune today that she and Kozuszek are aware of the three anomalies and over the next 10 days plan to double-check the hand-counted vote tallies provided by the precinct poll workers at Westchester 15, Pine 2, and Porter 6.

“We’ll also randomly pull some other precinct totals and double-check those and if any of those are inaccurate we’ll double-check all of them,” Kubacki said.

Westchester Township ultimately voted 20.4 percent yes and 79.6 percent no, which was fairly consistent with the majority of townships. Although with just two precincts, Pine Township had the highest percentage in favor of the RTD out of all the townships with 49.4 percent. Liberty Township voted 12 percent yes and Jackson Township reported voting 11 percent yes across their precincts.

Center Township, the township with the greatest number of voters in Tuesday’s referendum, balanced out some of the final vote with nearly 30 percent of voters saying yes in the referendum.

This may be due to the possibility of Valparaiso receiving a major boost for its bus transportation systems and the desire to extend the South Shore line into the city.

Kozuszek predicted the turnout to be 13 to 15 percent prior to the election, which is about the same for a typical city election, she said. Kozuszek gave credit to her staff for all their hard work in making this off-year election run smoothly and noted they saved the county nearly $150,000 by using paper ballots.

St. Joseph County also voted down the RTD in Tuesday’s referendum with 19,640 saying no and 1,053 saying yes. The fact that St. Joseph County had even less support for the RTD than Porter County may be because the bus transportation systems and South Shore extensions were proposed for Lake and Porter counties, but not St. Joseph.

Lake and LaPorte counties, although mandated by the state, did not hold special elections for the RTD referendum reportedly due to costs.

Complete election results precinct by precinct are on the back page of today’s Tribune and at

www.chestertontribune.com

The results of Tuesday’s election were no surprise for several officials, who said they feel the state lawmakers need to listen to the public’s opinion. Porter County Council member Sylvia Graham, D-at large, said the referendum should be a sign to the legislators that the public does not want additional taxes.

“Porter County and St. Joseph County did what the state mandated, so however they decide, that should be how it goes. The people have spoken,” Graham said.

Graham, who is also a board member for the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, which funds the South Shore line, pointed out that the South Shore is one of the most profitable commuter trains in the nation garnering a 59 percent fare recovery ratio prior to the recession while the Chicago Transit Authority is predicting a $300 million deficit for next year. Graham said adding mass transit systems could risk a financial collapse with the taxpayer being the one paying the bill.

Graham debated the RTD with Heather Ennis of the Chesterton/Duneland Chamber of Commerce last Friday on Chesterton High School’s radio station WDSO.

Ennis said she was disappointed with the RTD defeat, but hopes those against the RTD can put together a plan to say yes to some projects that will benefit the county and the region as a whole.

“There are still things we need to think about regionally,” she said.

Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority Executive Director Bill Hanna said poor communication and misinformation were to blame for the RTD’s defeat and felt the public needed to be better informed about the issues. Hanna said he hopes the public and elected officials will put aside their political feelings and seek ways to improve Northwest Indiana’s transportation systems.

“If you accept the answer as being the status quo, that’s not acceptable. That’s not a very responsible approach to the issue,” he said.

Hanna said he feels the mass transit systems will benefit everyone and said in order to build economic growth, the counties need to invest in this kind of infrastructure.

The opinions on the RTD of county officials had not changed much as they waited at the Porter County Administrative building in Valparaiso Tuesday night to hear election results.

Porter County Commissioner President Robert Harper and County Council member Dan Whitten, D-at large, both felt the creation of the district would be a bad investment and were pleased to see the public voted firmly against it.

“This shows people are tired of paying for unnecessary expenditures,” Whitten said. “We will stand by the public’s decision and we expect the regional leaders to do the same.”

Harper, who is also the chairman of The Committee to Stop the RTA, said the .25 percent raise in income tax was not the big reason people voted against the RTD but simply because it made little sense in the first place.

State Senator Karen Tallian, D-Ogden Dunes, later commented the legislators who wanted to get this passed ended up with a “messed up” bill, which made it very difficult for people to vote for it and that the RTD referendum should have been delayed until a regular election. She said the legislators who mandated this single-issue referendum need to realize it’s a problem making big decisions like this when only a small portion of the voters turn out.

Officials doubted the RTD will be resurfacing anytime soon in the state legislature. State Representative Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, said the legislature may try to argue the referendum was ineffective due to the low voter turnout. He also said even if the RTD did pass it would be at least two to three years before any action is taken with the RTD due to the complexity of the bill.

Hanna said the RDA will continue its efforts in building transportation systems that will promote economic growth in the region.

“Funding for transportation is going to continue to be an issue,” said Hanna. “I think what needs to happen next is incumbent upon all leaders to collaboratively produce a better solution for these systems.”

Posted 11/4/2009