Indiana will lobby the ”ultimate” federal decision-makers to build a third major regional airport in Gary even if the bi-state committee studying the issue recommends a different location, Indiana Gov. Evan Bayh said Tuesday.
Bayh said that although Indiana officials had not given up hope that the site-selection panel would pick Gary, they, nevertheless, would take their case directly to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Samuel Skinner, who will decide whether to follow the committee`s recommendation.
”Regardless of what comes out (of the committee), this decision is so important and so large that it ultimately will be made at the highest level of federal government,” perhaps reaching as high as President Bush, Bayh said. He added that the ”political overtones” of the site-selection process could not be ignored.
”We hope the vice president remembers he does come from the state of Indiana,” the Democratic governor said.
Bayh`s comments came at a news conference at the Gary Regional Airport at which he announced that his new airport coordinator and former chief of staff, D. William Moreau Jr., met with Indiana`s congressional delegation Tuesday in Washington in an effort to enlist its unanimous support for Gary.
Recently, Sen. Richard Lugar, one of Indiana`s two Republican senators, publicly questioned the suitability of Gary for an airport and raised doubts that an airport would be built anywhere because of its multibillion dollar expense.
In suggesting that Indiana would not necessarily go along with the bi-state panel`s recommendation, Bayh said that ”a case can be made for any site,” and that data presented to the committee would be ”susceptible to a number of interpretations.”
He also said that Indiana has only four members on the 11-member committee, a factor that apparently would make it difficult for Gary to receive majority support on the panel. Illinois also has four members. Chicago has three.
The committee is scheduled to make its recommendation before the end of the year after reviewing economic, environmental, noise and air-traffic congestion data.
Besides Gary, the other locations under consideration are the Lake Calumet region on the Southeast Side of Chicago, an area straddling the Illinois-Indiana border to the east of Beecher in Will County, a site west of Peotone, and another northeast of Kankakee.
Reacting to Bayh`s comments, Illinois Transportation Secretary Kirk Brown, who is a member of the site-selection panel, said that he thought Indiana would abide by the committee`s decision if the committee ”acts in a responsible fashion and looks at all the data.”
He added that it was ”too early for any of us to jump to any conclusions” about where the airport should be located because the committee does not yet have sufficient data.
Robert Repel, an aide to Mayor Richard Daley, said he would not criticize Bayh`s advocacy of Gary.
Repel added that he was confident the site-selection panel would choose Lake Calumet and said he hoped all the participants would support that decision. But he declined to comment when asked whether Chicago would pledge to support a committee recommendation other than Lake Calumet.
