My esteemed colleague has been blogging about the Indiana Toll Road lately and how the State is making payments to the consortium leasing the road because it is not making enough money from increased tolls.   She  says the story must be true since the Daniels folks have never outright denied the allegation, even though they have commented on this blog.

Allow me to say that my counterpart is not wrong, but she is also not right.

After using my keen reporter skills built over the last 15 years,  I made a call to the Governor’s Budget Office. I found out the State has paid about $7.7 million to the Toll Road consortium, but not to make up for lost revenue. Although the tolls increased when the consortium took over the Road, if a driver uses an electronic pass they pay the 1986 toll rate.  Under the terms of the agreement, the State of Indiana agreed to pick up the difference.  Which to date has amounted to about $7.7 million, or .002 percent of the $3.8 billion the state received for the Toll Road.

Logic dictates that a good chunk of those using electronic tolling are Hoosiers living along the toll road who use it daily.  So in truth the State is subsidizing the driving of the people who were the ones most likely to complain.  Never mind the fact the last time they saw an increase in the Toll Road, I had a Jerri Curl and was madly in love with Denise from the Cosby Show.

So is the State paying money to the Toll Road consortium? Yes.  Is it because of loss revenue?  No.  It’s because the state is subsidizing the driving habits of people who haven’t paid a Toll increase in more than 20 years.

There’s the outrage.

UPDATE: This isn’t much of an update, but a Republican source who doesn’t want to be named says I’m wrong. I should note that my original post was premised on bipartisan sources. This is the game. This is how it’s played. And this is why we love it.

Yesterday, I threw out the allegation — backed up by several anonymous sources that I will not disclose — that the State currently is making payments to the consortium that runs the Indiana Toll Road because the consortium is not receiving enough revenue from increased tolls.

Not unexpectedly, the Mitchies descended on the blog. Heck, even the guy who officially speaks for the Toll Road consortium felt the need to make a comment.

The curious thing is that they didn’t deny the story. Instead, they attacked me and tried to shore up Daniels with all sorts of talking points I’ve heard a million times. Lame.

So, here’s your opportunity, Mitchies: Tell the world that the State of Indiana is not currently making payments to ITR.

Dear National Pundits,

Mitch Daniels is not a god.

Yours very truly,
Jennifer

Permit me to elaborate.

Did Republican Mitch Daniels win last week’s election in a landslide alongside Democrat Barack Obama, who took Indiana by a narrow margin? Yes, he did.

Has he publicly avoided the big social issues that Republicans trot out when they can’t think of anything else to talk about? Yes, he has.

Did he run a good campaign with an effusively positive message? You betcha.

Did he have a decent opponent with a strong message who forced him to defend his unpopular record? Not a chance.

I’ll give Daniels credit for a win, but I won’t give him all the credit for his big win, and I certainly don’t know that he’s earned all the lavish praise these 30,000-foot critics are heaping on him.

This is a guy whose concept of sound business principles includes grabbing the nearest pricing gun and selling off our stuff. We do that twice a year with the accumulated junk in our garage and basement. It’s not exactly high-brow economic policy.

Did you know, for example, that we taxpayers allegedly have been making payments to the operators of the Indiana Toll Road because the road is not generating the contractually guaranteed minimum revenue from the now-increased tolls?

And while he talks about the big pot o’ cash we got from the one-time lease, Daniels went and gave $50 million of it to Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard for a seemingly frivolous roundabout project that now may not get completed because Brainard, a fellow Republican, can’t come up with the rest of the cash to get the job done. All that while other cities wait patiently for construction projects that have been on the list for years.

FSSA privatization? Nothing went as planned, and people — the neediest people — were left without benefits or stuck on hold trying to figure out what to do next.

Ethics? Don’t even get me started on all the scandals that have plagued this administration, many of them at the highest levels of government.

Fiscal responsibility? I guess if you count shoving all your liabilities off on local government and hoping no one notices.

Look, Daniels won by a huge margin, and I accept that. (If for no other reason than it gives me four more years to talk about him.)

But let’s be honest: He got a free pass.

He never had to mention his opponent during his campaign because she never got her act together after the primary. Might he still have prevailed over another challenger? Sure. All I’m saying is that the national pundits and Republican insiders should take a closer look at their new hero before they carry him across the threshold.

What’s this? More trouble in the paradise that is our privatized Indiana Toll Road?

Differences over proposed contract terms between the private operator of the Indiana Toll Road and a union that represents its toll collectors could lead to a strike, a union official said Wednesday.

“If it keeps going on like it is, it is very possible,” said Bob Dobbs, a business agent for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 364 in South Bend.

Toll collectors along the 157-mile highway in northern Indiana voted in December to be represented by the Teamsters, but the union and the Indiana Toll Road Concession Co. (ITRCC) have been unable to agree on a contract since negotiations began in February.

A major sticking point now is over the company hiring temporary workers to fill slots the union says should go to permanent or part-time employees who would be represented by the Teamsters. The union now represents about 170 toll collectors, most of them full-time employees.

Did you really expect a pair of profit-driven foreign companies to put the interests of workers first?

These people are in it for the money. Period. If they can cut corners, mark up services and still get more money out of motorists, they will. That’s how business works.

It’s too bad for them that government isn’t a business.

Thanks to a last-minute decision by the Guv to move up the lease signing by one day, today is the day we celebrate the matrimonial joining of the Indiana Toll Road with the consortium of foreign companies that now run the 157-mile stretch of pavement.

Who can forget the tender moment when Mitch Daniels walked the Toll Road down the aisle, kissed her on the cheek and turned her over to her groom? It was emotional, to say the least.

Anyway, two years later, the relationship is really working out well.

Happy anniversary, Indiana Toll Road. Seventy-three years to go!