State Rep. Ed Soliday, a long-serving Republican, is facing two challengers this fall – Democrat Ryan Kominakis and Libertarian Travis Gearhart.
Among Soliday’s accomplishments is shepherding a revised gas tax formula to generate funding to address a backlog of road maintenance. If you think gas and diesel prices are high this year, though, consider that Gov. Mike Braun has suspended the gas tax since April to ease the pain at the pump. It could be a lot worse.
“Even with the gas tax suspended, gas prices are still super high, so I understand doing it,” Gearhart said. But that leaves Indiana eating into its surplus. Hoosiers will pay the price in the future, “which is exactly what happens when government tries to manipulate the market,” he said.
His solution? Legalize marijuana. “We are giving up to Illinois and Michigan in terms of cannabis sales. We are sitting here giving away good tax dollars that we could use for things like roads,” Gearhart said, instead of a gas tax that gets suspended when a governor deems prices too high.
Kominakis blames President Donald Trump’s war on Iran for blocking the Strait of Hormuz and driving up oil prices. If Indiana can continue to fund road maintenance without the gas tax, that’s his obvious choice.
Soliday gave the backstory on how the gas tax came about.
“We’re the crossroads of America,” he said, with a lot of out-of-state travel, especially heavy trucks that cause outsized damage to highways. The gas tax recovers some money from out-of-state vehicles “but not nearly as much for the damage they do,” Soliday said.
How about charging per mile traveled? It’s possible to install a geofence so when a Hoosier vehicle is out of state, it shuts down the mileage being collected for the state’s fee. The vehicle owner then gets a monthly bill.
“The pushback has been enormous” in Oregon and Texas, where the system has been put in place, Soliday said. Plus it’s 16 times as expensive to collect that tax vs. the gas tax, so what’s the return on investment?
In 2017, Soliday pushed for the gas tax. Roads have improved since then.
When Democratic Gov. Frank O’Bannon suspended the gas tax about 25 years ago, Republicans beat up Democrats when the tax was reinstated, calling it a tax increase. “I think the Democrats will return the favor,” Soliday said.
Soliday is chair of the House Utilities, Energy and Telecommunications Committee. That point is not lost on his challengers, especially with NIPSCO bills so much higher than just a few years ago and with power out for weeks, in some cases, in the wake of the Aug. 11 derecho.
A law Soliday authored allows utilities to add trackers to bills on top of basic rates. “Trackers make it where they can almost charge us for anything,” Kominakis said.
“It makes it so the IURC (Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission) is almost powerless,” so that law needs to be repealed or amended, he said.
“I do agree with state Rep. Chuck Moseley. I think reforming the IURC is a start,” Kominakis said. Maybe elect members or put retention questions on the ballot, he suggested, as having the governor appoint all the members doesn’t seem to be working.
Kominakis also wants a “reasonable” cap on any rate increases, although “I don’t want to commit to a number.”
Gearhart wants to start with a full audit. “We need to take a look at the books.”
As a Libertarian, “I’m all for everybody making as much money as possible,” but first take care of the job you’re supposed to be doing, he said.
NIPSCO is a government-controlled monopoly. “Is there some free-market way that we can force them to have some competition, to give the consumers some options?” Gearhart wonders.
Maybe reforming the IURC to be nonpartisan or elected would help, he said, but the audit needs to come first.
“We’ve done a lot already. The governor has kind of clouded the issue,” Soliday said, by replacing IURC members this year amid intense heat from Hoosiers.
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Soliday said a task force appointed to study the situation years ago came up with five pillars – affordability, reliability, resilience, stability and environment. All five need to be in balance, he said.
“The flavor of the month last year was reliability,” Soliday said. “This year, it’s affordability.”
One thing he learned in planning emergency responses during his career with United Airlines was “you never, never go with your first idea.”
NIPSCO is being blamed for not being aggressive enough in vegetation management, trimming trees and other vegetation that could threaten power lines, Soliday noted. But just three weeks before the derecho, there were protests that the utility was being too aggressive, he said.
The North American Electric Reliability Corp. created a regulation that utilities could be fined $1 million a day for improper vegetation management that causes a blackout or brownout, Soliday said, so NIPSCO has a strong incentive to prevent that possibility.
He wrote legislation that if a utility performs worse than previously, the IURC can take away the investor-owned utility’s return on equity. “We’re fairly new at performance-based legislation,” he said, but it’s a start.
Soliday criticized Braun for attempting to influence the IURC’s decisions. “The governor can’t be telling the IURC how to decide things. They are a judicial body.”
“Why don’t we decide things on the facts instead of on social media,” Soliday said. “We had 36- to 48-inch trees uprooted. We had concrete telephone poles snapped like toothpicks.”
Utility poles designed to withstand 55 mph winds can’t hold up to 120 mph winds, he noted.
The candidates offered some non-budget concerns.
“I want to make sure the veterans are taken care of,” Kominakis said. Veterans looking for help often reach out to nonprofits and other organizations to get health care, he said, so the state should provide a little bit more pay and proper training to county veterans service officers and others, he said.
Kominakis also wants to see the state’s minimum wage, at $7.25 an hour since 2009, increased. He also wants unemployment benefits boosted from the current $390 per week minimum. That’s just $335 a week after taxes. Increase it to $425, $450 or $500, he suggested. “Anything better than we have right now.”
Gearhart wants term limits. “I have signed a pledge that if I win, I will only run for two terms.” The number of terms is negotiable, but term limits are necessary, he said. “We need term limits nationally, we need term limits statewide, we need term limits locally.”
“You have positions where people go into government from meager means and walk out wealthy,” Gearhart said. “That’s not right.”
“Almost everything, in the end, deals with money,” Soliday said.
He cited his legislation to revamp the Little Calumet River Basin Development Commission. “There was $30 million, and nobody knew where it went,” Soliday said. His legislation required an independent audit.
“An easy cliché is transparency, but what does it mean?” he said. “We publish where every dime goes on a portal, but who looks at it?”
“How do you convert data into information and not have it become biased? Who is going to understand it?” And how is that converted into digestible information, he asked.
He also cited the need for civility in public forums so everyone’s voice can be heard.
Whether it’s a data center, school referendum or other controversy, “the system is based on let’s hear you. If you have a fact, we want to know about it,” Soliday said.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.