When the Porter County Commissioners meet at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the Administration Building, they’ll be considering an ordinance which would formally strip the Town of Hebron, the City of Valparaiso, and the Tri-Towns of their appointments to the Porter County Convention, Recreation, and Visitor Commission (PCCRVC).

Currently the nine appointments to the PCCRVC are apportioned this way: the Commissioners have three (each Commissioner customarily appointing a person from his or her district); the Porter County Council, one; the City of Portage, two; and Hebron, Valparaiso, and the Tri-Towns, one each (the Chesterton, Porter, and Burns Harbor town councils making their single appointment by consensus).

Under an ordinance, however, proposed by Commissioner Bob Harper, D-Center, Hebron, Valparaiso, and the Tri-Towns would lose their appointments to the Commissioners.

The Commissioners, in turn, would have six appointments to the PCCRVC in place of their present three. The Porter County Council would retain its single appointment as would Portage its two.

Harper told the Chesterton Tribune today that, as originally envisioned by state statute, a county’s tourism bureau would be comprised of two appointments by the county’s largest city and the rest by the county’s commissioners. When Porter County created its PCCRVC, on the other hand, the decision was made to apportion the appointments as they are now.

But that apportionment has the effect of “diluting” the PCCRVC’s political accountability among the eight separate elected bodies responsible for making appointments to it, Harper said: the County Commissioners, the County Council, the cities of Portage and Valparaiso, and the towns of Hebron, Chesterton, Porter, and Burns Harbor.

So citizens unhappy with its policy not only have no direct say in who sits on the PCCRVC, they have only a very limited say in who the elected officials are who do have a say, Harper said. That’s because “there’s no one elected body that really has a strong say in any of the appointments.”

When asked whether any specific issue had prompted him to propose the ordinance, Harper said that “there has been a lot of debate on the commission about money going to county venues, like the Expo Center, about how that money is going to be spent. People on both sides are very unhappy about how money is being spent.”

“I have a deep-rooted belief that you should not have an unelected body dealing with tax money,” Harper said. “Some people should be responsible for tax money. That’s when elected officials have to answer for their decisions at election time.”

“I know people on the commission have been talking about regionalization,” Harper added, although he conceded having no specific knowledge of any PCCRVC members actually being in favor of regionalization, that is, the merger of the PCCRVC with its Lake or LaPorte county equivalent.

“No one says that they are but that discussion has come up. And as matters stand now, there’s no one elected body that can make a difference if that question comes up.”

Harper acknowledged that officials and possibly citizens of Hebron, Valparaiso, and the Tri-Towns could object to the proposed ordinance.

“I realize they may not be happy,” he said. “But I think it’s critically important.”

In any case, Harper said, any overlapping terms would be allowed to expire, and in all likelihood the County Commissioners themselves would re-appoint some or all of the members seated by Hebron, Valparaiso, and the Tri-Towns.

Posted 12/11/2009