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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA state lawmaker introduced an amendment Tuesday to an Indianapolis road funding bill that would allow the city to declare itself as a distressed unit of government, a move that would give the state the authority to appoint an emergency manager to oversee all aspects of the city.
Rep. Bob Behning, R-Indianapolis, authored the amendment, which would add a new clause to the definition of a distressed asset, stating that any municipality that is at least $1 billion behind in funding its critical infrastructure needs can declare such status.
A report from Indianapolis-based engineering firm HNTB Corp. using 2019 data found the city would need $635 million in additional annual funding to maintain its roads.
Adjusted for inflation and increased construction costs, that amount would approach about $1 billion in 2023, Behning said.
“If you talk to [the Indiana Department of Transportation], they will tell you that our costs are up almost 40% over what they were just several years ago,” Behning said.
In its original version, Senate Bill 283, authored by Sen. Aaron Freeman, R-Indianapolis, which passed the Senate last month by a 48-0 vote, would allocate an additional $8 million in annual road funding to the city by including about 196,000 residents in Decatur, Pike and Wayne townships as part of the city’s population.
Those townships weren’t taken into account in the city’s share of state road funding due a technical error dating back to the consolidation of city and county government in 1970, Freeman said.
Behning’s amendment would keep that provision of the bill. He said the distressed declaration would “allow the city to leverage more resources” to pay for infrastructure costs, including taking up to 20% of its tax increment funding to put toward road funds, enacting a $50 vehicle registration fee and raising its wheel tax.
But city officials, local government advocates and several Democrats serving on the House Roads and Transportation committee voiced deep concerns Tuesday over the language in the amendment.
Dan Parker, the city’s deputy mayor and former head of public works, said it would amount to a massive tax increase for Marion County residents and put the city’s financial reputation at risk.
“Indianapolis is the economic engine of the state of Indiana. Indianapolis is not a distressed unit,” Parker told the committee. “We’ve invested in our infrastructure without selling off assets or raising taxes.”
Taylor Hughes, vice president of policy and strategy for the Indy Chamber, said declaring distressed status would hinder the city’s ability to attract economic development.
“We think a distressed status candidly sends a pretty strong and negative message to potential investors that this isn’t a good place to put your money or expand your operations,” Hughes told the committee.
Behning said the intent of his amendment was not to allow the state to take over the city but to “provide more flexibility in terms of access to additional resources to meet their needs.”
Jenna Bentley, director of government affairs for Accelerate Indiana Municipalities, a group representing the interests of cities and towns, said distressed status should only be used “as a last resort” and urged the committee to consider other options.
One of those options is changing the state’s road funding formula to be based on vehicle miles traveled instead of center-line miles, which disproportionately benefits rural areas with fewer lanes of traffic. Center-line miles simply measure the length of a road, while vehicle miles traveled per capita is calculated as the total annual miles of vehicle travel divided by the total population in a particular region.
Committee chair Rep. Jim Pressel, a Republican from rural northwestern Indiana, said he isn’t inclined to consider such a change.
“I don’t think there are votes in this body to make that happen,” Pressel told reporters following the hearing. “So let’s just cast that aside. Let’s quit talking about it and figure out some new solutions.”
Pressel said the distressed status amendment is “not going to go forward” but there might be other amendments considered at the committee’s next hearing.
City officials have tried for years to get the state to change its road funding formula, arguing that it doesn’t take into account the 166,000 people who live outside of the county but commute to Indy for work.
In hopes of building a broader coalition, the city commissioned a study that found the eight “donut” counties surrounding Marion—whose cities have seen tremendous growth in recent decades, leading to greater traffic volumes and wider roads—also stand to lose out on road funding under the current model.
The study by Indianapolis-based Policy Analytics also found the eight suburban counties in the Indianapolis metropolitan statistical area fell in the bottom third in terms of funding by local vehicle miles traveled. Ohio County, the smallest and least populous county in the state, received the most funding under that model.
But the data hasn’t been enough to sway state lawmakers, particularly those in rural areas whose districts would stand to lose some funding if the formula were changed.
While Marion County maintains about 8,400 miles of roadway measured by lane miles traveled, it receives funding for only about 3,300 of those lane miles.
In 2021, the state allocated $663 million in road funding to local governments. Marion County received just over $30 million of that, or about 4.5%, despite making up about 13% of the total state population.
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I thought the GOP was all about small government and local control. This sounds like an authoritarian takeover of the City’s government. This article clearly points out that the State funds less than half of the total lane miles traveled in Indy, which could easily be fixed by the State government. They’d rather continue using their seemingly socialist road funding formula where wealth is redistributed from the Indianapolis area and spread to poor, rural counties.
I thought the GOP believed that the redistribution of wealth was bad. I thought people were supposed to keep what they earned, and work harder to earn more if they want more. Does this not apply to communities? Why is Indianapolis being forced to subsidize declining rural areas around Indiana? Shouldn’t rural areas step up and make themselves better?
I just love all the irony in this story.
Well put.
+1
A report from Indianapolis-based engineering firm HNTB Corp. using 2019 data found the city would need $635 million in additional annual funding to maintain its roads.
With the inept management of Indianapolis at its current rate, in 2025 the entire city will be a chuck hole. But we have a billion to put West Michigan street on a “traffic diet”, there words not mine!
The most ironic thing about the poor road conditions is that the poorest area’s of the city are exponentially worse.
I hope these are not the marginalized populations that keep appearing in these pages.
Merriam Webster-Marginalized: to relegate to an unimportant or powerless position within a society or group
Where are you getting this nonsense that a billion dollars would be spent solely on a “road diet” for Michigan Street? You are mixing up various different projects and numbers to spout off a uniformed political screed. Go back and read the articles closely and hopefully you will understand the facts.
I believe you’ve mixed things up slightly – https://www.ibj.com/articles/city-breaks-ground-on-key-project-of-1-1-billion-infrastructure-plan
The West Michigan “traffic diet” is just $4.7m of that $1.1b. Quote from the linked article: “The project is part of the city’s $1.1 billion, five-year infrastructure capital plan. The city expects to spend $443 million as part of that plan this year.”
For years State legislative members have made attempts through Bills, amendments, etc. to take over funds of Indianapolis. This is just another ploy in GOP attack on Indianapolis and citizens thereof.
It’s easy for legislators to claim they want to take over Indianapolis and drop some words that make them sound smart and serious.
It’s really hard for them to come up with what they’d do if they actually ran Indianapolis. None of them are brave enough to actually run for the mayor’s office. I wonder why?
Given Behning’s solution for the Indiana educational system is to destroy it, I can only assume that his fix for Indianapolis is along the same lines. This is the stupidest bill filed since the one that set the number for pi.
Then again, when you’re just a retired florist who somehow is the most influential person in the Indiana education system,,maybe you believe you’re just the smartest person in every room you walk into. Or, maybe your solution to government is how you handled flowers – cheaper fo neglect and throw away as opposed to properly taking care of something so it lasts longer.
Most of the problems that Republican state legislators find with Indianapolis were caused by (wait for it…) Republican state legislators.
From capping property taxes at rates that are too low to sufficiently support the needs of the state’s largest city to embracing a state road funding formular that shorts the city of the dollars it deserves, the Republican super majority had its thumb on our scale for far too long.
What we need is not another inane “proposal” to “save” the city, but for the Republicans to recognize a vital, functioning Indianapolis as the state’s economic engine will better benefit the other 91 counties in the state (most of which are represented by (wait for it…) Republicans.
How well did this work out for Flint?
I don’t like the idea, but if gets attention on the inequities of the state road funding formula, they maybe it was a good move.
Vote those dummies out!!!!! Outdated weirdo thinking is why not Many people want to move to Indiana. Get them out!!!!!!
It is startling to see the deterioration of the roads on so many marts of Indianapolis. There was a website (I believe) that citizens could call in the worst of the worst potholes and the city boasted how many were being filled. The trouble is that in many areas it isn’t “a pothole’ that is the problem, but rather the entire street.
Take a ride on 86th Street near Costco. Heading west, you better have a mouthguard to protect your fillings.
Road miles is an entirely fair funding mechanism. 6 lanes wide on I-465’s 50+ miles certainly deserve more funding than a rural 2 lane road with little traffic.
How about all the distrubion centers that are popping up in all the donut counties??? They will add thousands of truck miles going through Indy. Can we look at them, to pull some funding help?
*Distribution not distrubion*