Op-Ed: Proposed Mid-States Corridor will ruin our great community

Lies, deceit, manipulation, and conflicts of interest are words that come to mind when analyzing what has been going on with the people pushing the Mid-States Corridor as a needed project for the future prosperity of Dubois County and all Southwest Indiana. So let me clarify who those “people” are. 

They include INDOT leadership Commissioner Lyndsay Quist and the Secretary of Transportation and Infrastructure Matt Uebelhor, the INDOT Mid-States Corridor Project Manager Kyanna Wheeler, and the appointed Regional Development Authority board Mark Schroeder, David Drake, Ken Mulzer Jr., Scott Blazey, Sue Ellspermann and their legal counsel Bill Kaiser. 

They include past Indiana State Senator Mark Messmer, and past Indiana State Representative Mike Braun who co-authored the bill that would now include transportation infrastructure projects so the RDA board could raise private and public funds for the initial study, by passing the citizens. 

They include key business owners who have been leading this effort for the benefit of their own businesses, including OFS owner Hank Menke, Meyer Distributing’s Mike Braun, and a handful of others. And finally, they include the Lochmueller Group, who have been paid millions of dollars to prepare the studies that would fit the wants of these business owners and their political allies. 

Let’s first start with the Lochmueller Group and INDOT and how they have continued to manipulate and change the data in their studies, so it aligns with the wishes of the proponents who have invested their own money for the study. After all, when you have a client paying for a study you want to be sure the outcome fits what they want. Their client has been trying to figure out a way to make their dream a reality, and even though there have been other studies done in the past that have resulted in nothing being built, Lochmueller and INDOT will state publicly that these previous studies are all indications there is a need for this project. Manipulation and deceit! That is just BS. To continue, these previous attempts to push something through have been orchestrated by some of the same wealthy businessmen and now they continue to use their political influence for the proposed Mid-States Corridor project.

So, what have they been able to do? In 2017 after State Senator Messmer and State Representative Braun co-authored and passed Senate Bill 128, they were able to form a Regional Development Authority specifically to support this project. They then influenced the Dubois County Government and the Jasper and Huntingburg City Councils to appoint the five-member RDA board. It just happens that several of these appointed board members have been involved with previous efforts and studies, some who will personally benefit from this project. 

Another interesting fact is that early in the process, after the initial funds were raised for a study, the Lochmueller Group was awarded the job. It just happens that Keith Lochmueller was previously a board member for the Coalition for I-67 project headed by the CEO of OFS, Hank Menke.

Here are a few other interesting things that have occurred during this study process –

The Tier 1 study incorporated a 12-county study area when they were evaluating five different routes. Now with the selected preferred route, they continue to use the data from the 12-county area to help make numbers look better for such things as workforce accessibility and regional “connectivity”.

With the TIER 2 study going through Dubois County, Lochmueller and INDOT started the process of surveying properties. When landowners received letters notifying them of the surveying activity, many sent cease and desist letters to Lochmueller in return. While state statute allows surveyors to access the land, there is a process they must follow regarding notifying the landowners. The landowners that sent cease and desist letters wanted to be sure Lochmueller and INDOT followed the proper process. In several cases they did not. 

INDOT sued the landowners claiming that they were causing a delay in their work; and yet today the timeline they originally published for the TIER 2 study has not changed. Was INDOT’s representative on the stand in court lying to the judge? 

Most recently the appointed Secretary of Transportation and Infrastructure along with a few others have tried to compare the Mid-States Corridor project to the past development of Patoka Lake as an example of a project that resulted in many benefits to Southern Indiana. Unfortunately, this is like comparing apples and oranges. They are not the same.

So here we are today. What has all this time and energy resulted in? What used to be a tightknit community has become a divided community. People are angry and the more they have learned how this will affect their community with very little benefit for them, and in fact create more commuting and safety issues, all for the benefit of a few businesses to save minutes in travel time for their trucks, they get more upset and madder. As I talk to people in the community I hear words like selfishness, greed, power-hungry, and these are the kind words. I cannot publish the other things they say. 

Now, what about all the costs? INDOT’s latest estimate of $1.1 billion just for the Dubois County portion of the highway, which equates to $47 million per mile, does not include the cost of land acquisition. The latest news from INDOT is that they want the county and the cities of Huntingburg and Jasper to take over responsibility for the existing US 231. They are willing to negotiate how this would be done and the support INDOT would provide, but when pressed for details they spew all sorts of ideas but nothing concrete. 

On top of these costs is the expectation that the county and cities would contribute 10% of the cost of building the highway. If my calculation is correct, that is $110 million of our taxpayers’ money, plus untold additional millions by the time land acquisition, court costs, inflation and cost overruns are accounted for. The reality is that this will impact every taxpayer in the state of Indiana and will take away needed funds for more important projects that are truly needed not just wanted.

Recently the Indiana Economic Development Commission, IEDC, came under scrutiny and what was discovered was a lot of underhanded dealings and misuse of funds. It is time the proposed Mid-States Corridor project was investigated by an independent group for wrongdoings, and it is time this proposed project stopped.

Mark Nowotarski
Coalition Against the Mid-States Corridor
Dubois County