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WASHINGTON – Northeast Indiana communities and agencies will receive $3.1 million for an array of projects, including equipment to read crime suspects’ palm prints, curriculum development at two private universities and industrial park development in two towns.
The money is in a $447 billion spending bill that includes the 2010 budgets for dozen of federal agencies, departments and programs.
Rep. Mark Souder, R-3rd, voted against the bill that included money for 10 projects he sought.
No Republican voted for the measure, which was approved 221-202 and sent to the Senate.
The bill includes:
•$600,000 to buy equipment for the Fort Wayne Police Department to identify suspects through palm prints.
•$500,000 to widen Indiana 205 where it intersects U.S. 30 in Columbia City in preparation for Parkview Hospital’s new facility in 2011.
•$500,000 for a sewer system in an industrial park in Syracuse.
•$340,000 to help Trine University in Angola develop online classes for a master’s degree program in civil/mechanical engineering.
•$260,000 to create a languages institute at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne to teach high school students Arabic, Chinese and Japanese.
•$250,000 for new water and sewer lines to a new industrial park in Nappanee.
•$250,000 to pay salaries for a new criminal intelligence division in the Elkhart County’s prosecutor office to focus on meth-related prosecutions.
•$200,000 to help expand the offices of the American Red Cross of Northeast Indiana to accommodate an emergency operations center.
•$150,000 to expand the adult and continuing education program in medical-device research at Grace College and Theological Seminary in Winona Lake.
•$100,000 to expand the work-training programs at Easter Seals Arc of Northeast Indiana.
Souder said he voted against the bill despite asking for money for home-state projects because it cost too much and because there are policy provisions he finds distasteful.
“The spending alone would have been enough,” he said, “even if the other policies weren’t bad.”
The bill also includes provisions Souder vehemently opposed: It would overturn a ban on the funding of abortion by the District of Columbia government and a ban on Washington’s needle exchange program. It would open the door to the use of medical marijuana in Washington and allow payments to Planned Parenthood.
Asked whether he feels bad about voting against a bill that includes money he requested for projects in his district, Souder said, “Not too much.”
“We don’t get our fair share back anyway,” he said. Souder also said he was pleased that of the dozens of projects he submitted, the members of the appropriations committees granted those that deal primarily with job creation.
The bill includes a possible lifeline for thousands of car and truck dealerships, including about a dozen in northeast Indiana, that lost franchises as part of the government-funded bankruptcy restructurings of Chrysler and General Motors.
The 789 Chrysler dealers closed in June, and more than 1,350 GM dealers are expected to be shut down next year. The bill would offer an improved binding arbitration process to challenge the automakers’ decisions.
The bill also:
•Would permit detainees held at Guantanamo to be transferred to the United States to stand trial but not to be released.
•Gives federal workers an average 2 percent pay increase.
•Increases heating subsidies for the poor to $5.1 billion, almost 40 percent more than President Obama requested.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
