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CIB Bailout Bill Dies In Committee

Bailout Bill Pulled After Accusations Of Partisanship

POSTED: 12:28 pm EDT June 17, 2009
UPDATED: 3:58 pm EDT June 17, 2009

A bill to bail out the Indianapolis Capital Improvement Board is dead after it was pulled from committee.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Crawford, a Democrat, said that the vote he interrupted Tuesday night will not resume because of a lack of bipartisan support, 6News' Norman Cox reported.

All 10 Republicans had voted against the bill before any Democrats had voted. Crawford said if support wasn't going to be bipartisan, there would be no vote at all.

"So we sorta have to look within the goodness of our hearts to be working on this issue to begin with, and then to have it politicized the way it was," said Rep. Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City.

But Republicans said they voted en masse against the bill because Democrats had tacked on too many things benefiting other areas, things that further drained the state's budget surplus.

"I mean, we were prepared to vote for a CIB. I'm not sure every one of our Republican members would have, but once they started adding (things) to it that were sort of unrelated to CIB, then that meant some of us were going to jump off," said Rep. Eric Turner, R-Marion.

Committee members were supposed to meet again Wednesday morning, but Crawford canceled the meeting, saying that there was still no spirit of cooperation. The committee is not scheduled to meet again.

City Controller David Reynolds said Tuesday that a failure to approve a bailout would force the CIB to start notifying future convention holders that they might have to go elsewhere.

The organization, which overseas the operations of Lucas Oil Stadium, Conseco Fieldhouse, Victory Field and the Indiana Convention Center has an expected operating deficit of $47 million and could run out of money by this fall.

The bill could be revived in the Senate, but not in a bill by itself. The bailout provisions could be inserted into the budget bill at that point.

Watch 6News and refresh this page for updates.

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