Letter: Commissioners smart not to put cart before the horse

I would like to thank the Dubois County Commissioners for not following the example of the Mid-States Corridor Regional Development Authority, Governor Mike Braun, and INDOT of putting the cart before the horse on the Mid-States Corridor Project.

After multiple studies over 40 years have shown that the road known as the Mid-States Corridor in its current iteration was not needed and was environmentally and economically unfeasible, a group of local businessmen, along with then State Representative Mark Messmer and then State Senator Mike Braun, came up with the idea of changing a good law designed to help facilitate multijurisdictional projects for the good of the communities into a way for a project to bypass the usual studies needed for a project to start, and, thanks to tax-deductible contributions from the private sector, start with the conclusion that the road will be built, then work backwards to provide enough justification to get the state and federal government to fund the project.

After hiring a firm to do this, they came to the conclusion that they could not justify it by the initial suggestions of reduced congestion and safety, and they came up with justifying it by improved connectivity (by building a road that stops and ends at the same location as the existing road, thereby creating no new connectivity), and by increased accessibility to multimodal facilities which the few local companies they talked to say they do not use.

The forces behind this project are apparently trying to increase public acceptance by killing a project that would have provided most of what the Mid-States Corridor project would (“Governor announces $75M improvements to U.S. 231”, Dubois County Free Press, June 14, 2021), and allowing the current US 231 to deteriorate, as evidenced by the numerous potholes between Jasper and Huntingburg that have not been properly repaired in three years, including this year’s batch which have not even been filled in. Giving away the title to the existing road before the first shovel digs in the ground on a replacement is just another step in their effort to manufacture justification for the project that only a handful of people want.

The county made a wise decision by agreeing not to take over the maintenance of this neglected stretch of highway because of a proposed project that is facing strong opposition from landowners, environmentalists, and citizens who do not want our rural communities destroyed, does not yet have any construction plans on paper and no funding allocated by federal and state governments that are having trouble finding the funding to maintain the infrastructure they have.

Thomas Bartelt
Huntingburg