Daniels explains 'Moves'

The "Major Moves" legislation became even more famous -- or infamous, to some -- when Gov. Mitch Daniels gave a speech about the legislation at a U.S. Congress hearing regarding the future of highway funding Wednesday in Washington.\nQuoting U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, Daniels said that partnering with private sectors to fund and help operate roads will provide a more secure future for infrastructure development and maintenance. He said that when he took office, he looked at all of the roadways in need of improvement and saw that Indiana was about $3 billion short. \n"For a centrally located state that accurately labels itself 'The Crossroads of America,' one with great promise as a logistics and distribution capital, the cost of inaction would be especially enormous," Daniels said, according to an online transcript. \nDaniels told Congress he had considered all options for raising the funds necessary to complete these projects, including raising taxes and fees pertaining to vehicles. Finally, another option became clear.\n"The only real alternative was to bring to bear that handiest of revenue sources: Other People's Money," he said. \nDaniels said his goal was to get more for the toll road than the estimate, which the state soon learned is not hard to do when it received a bid of $3.8 billion for the Indiana Toll Road, which was valued to be worth $1.1 billion.\nDaniels highlighted some of the main aspects of the state's contract and expressed his interest in helping Congress learn more about the deal.\n"We have found a way to close our infrastructure gap and invest in hard, permanent public assets for our future without a penny of gas tax increase or a penny of debt," he said.\nWhile Daniels' presentation may have appealed to Congress, Steve Bonney, a West Lafayette farmer who -- along with members of the Citizens' Action Coalition -- currently has a lawsuit pending against the Daniels administration for its passage of "Major Moves," noticed something was conspicuously missing from Daniels' speech: public policy issues. Bonney's suit questions the Constitutionality of the "Major Moves" plan.\n"Our side of it is that there are some serious issues in this arrangement that aren't necessarily revealed in his testimony," Bonney said. "I'm opposed to this privatization until we figure out the public policy aspects of it. It's not free. ... and if we all end up paying tolls we're just paying more taxes, it's just a different name for them."\nBonney's case has been expedited because if there are still lawsuits against the plan pending June 30, the consortium can back out of the deal without consequence. \n"I think Congress is certainly interested -- everyone's interested in finding new ways to finance infrastructure, but the question is who is really going to pay?" said Bonney, who watched Daniels' presentation via webcast. "It's borrowing from the future. That money all has to be paid back by someone"