A bill to strengthen the state’s outdated eminent domain laws in the face of a proposed freight train line that would slice through southern Lake and Porter counties is steaming ahead and should be ready for Gov. Eric Holcomb’s signature early in the week.
House Bill 1260 made it out of the senate with a unanimous vote on Monday, March 27. It passed the House of Representatives in late January and will return there for a vote on a few tweaks from the senate.
“It’s a formality,” State Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, said of the House vote, expected Monday. Holcomb will have 10 days to sign the bill once it gets to his office.
The bill “protects people who own property,” Soliday said. He authorized the bill in light of Great Lakes Basin Transportation’s proposed freight train line from Milton, Wis., into LaPorte County. The $8 billion, privately-funded line is being pitched as a bypass for Chicago’s congested rail yards.
Residents along the route in three states have bombarded the federal Surface Transportation Board with thousands of comments and letters, and showed up at public meetings last spring because they were concerned about drainage woes, loss of farmland, and public safety, among other worries.
The current law, which dates to 1888, states that if a railroad had 15 investors and $50,000 or $1,000 per mile of railroad, it could become a railroad in Indiana and exercise eminent domain.
The bill, which would take effect July 1, states that any rail line must follow Indiana’s incorporation rules and show compelling public benefit. It also brings Indiana in line with federal law, and allows a judge to negotiate a price for a landowner’s property that’s higher than the maximum bid offered.
“This legislation brings the state into the 21st century and levels the playing field for the public. It ensures projects that will deeply affect people truly are in the best interest of the community at large,” said Commissioner Laura Blaney, D-South, an early opponent of the freight train line when local officials first learned about it a year ago. The route would bisect her property in Porter Township.
Soliday, chair of the House transportation committee, questioned the customer base of Great Lakes Basin Transportation since two of the Class 1 railroads that route through Chicago have said they will not use the freight line. The other four railroads appear uncommitted.
“Most (of the railroads) have routes around Chicago already,” he said, adding CREATE, or the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency Program, is already tackling the congestion the new line proposes to alleviate. “They’ve done a lot of good work.”
Officials with Great Lakes Basin Transportation asked the Surface Transportation Board to suspend an environmental review of the proposal until they could formally apply for the project.
Federal officials extended that request in early March, but said that if the application isn’t in by May 1, they would stop work on the environmental review and take down the project website.
Noting he hasn’t seen a business plan from Great Lakes Basin Transportation, Soliday said he was skeptical of its plans.
“Where do Hoosiers benefit, for the cost to the environment and residents?” he said. “When you look at this from a business perspective, I don’t see that it goes anywhere.”
Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
