Full funding for all three winners of Indiana's Regional Cities Initiative is in jeopardy after Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, said Thursday a bill to provide those dollars is stalled in the House.
The legislature last year set aside $84 million from the state's 2015 tax amnesty program to pay for the Regional Cities economic development initiative.
The money was meant to be split in half, with $42 million going to each winner. But in December, the Pence administration chose three regional winners-- North Central, Northeast and Southwest -- and the governor declared his intention to get an extra $42 million from the legislature to fully fund all three.
While a bill to do so easily cleared the Senate, Bosma says there isn't enough support for it in the House Ways and Means Committee.
"We struck a deal last year and those who object to it, that's what they're saying, we set it in statute, that's what it was; the administration did more, they should be held to the statute," says Bosma.
Bosma suggests packaging that bill with other incentives could make its passage easier --for example, the House Republican road funding plan and its tax increases, which Senate lawmakers aren't supporting.
Senate GOP Leader David Long says he doesn't think that kind of deal-making is necessary.
"The Regional Cities plan, I think, i s strong enough to stand on its own and I think in the end it will. But we'll have to keep talking."
Long says, if necessary, his caucus will include Regional Cities funding in a bill currently in the Senate if House lawmakers don't advance the measure.