When casting their ballots to replace Porter County South District Commissioner Laura Blaney, who is not seeking reelection, voters have their choice between a candidate with many years of experience leading Porter County government and another with just as many years as a local township trustee.
Democrat Dan Whitten served four terms as an at-large member of the Porter County Council, and 12 as president. “When I left four years ago we were easily fiscally solvent and frankly I want to get in there and see if I can help fix this mess,” he said. Whitten is a bankruptcy attorney who also advises school corporations.
As an Army veteran who served as a flight medic as well as a Lake Station police officer for 16 years, he says he has a deep understanding of public safety. He says his support of a public safety tax is merely philosophical since commissioners don’t get to vote on implementing one.
“I know what it means to reduce response time,” Whitten added.
He’s also in favor of forming a West Porter Township Fire Protection Territory that should have been done “a year ago. The fact of the matter is I’m talking about my own money too,” he said as a resident.
Whitten said it’s unfair to the firefighters of the current district as well as the Porter County residents there that one hasn’t been formed already.
“Everyone’s frustrated,” he said. “No one understands why it hasn’t been formed and if I get on that commission it’s a priority of mine.”
As the first chair of the Porter County Foundation, the body that governs the earnings from the sale of the county hospital, Whitten helped draft its by-laws and investment policy. “I’m a fiscally conservative guy,” he said. “I felt very strongly, like I do today, that we need to protect the corpus of that investment.” Therefore, he’s opposed to touching the principal.
Whitten feels communication between the council and the board of commissioners is essential as well. “Come on, guys. This isn’t higher mathematics. Just talk to one another,” he said. “I believe if I were in the room I could get all of them talking.”
Porter Township Trustee Ed Morales has been in the job for 17 years. The Republican said he’s concerned with several challenges facing the county: roads, public safety, the ambulance contract and inflation.
“There’s a lot of things that have to be repaired and fixed and it’s going to take money,” he said.
That said, he wasn’t a fan of using an increased draw on the interest from the sale of the hospital to give a 3% raise to county employees. “I’m not by any means implying the employees don’t deserve it, but perhaps a stipend would have been a better way to pay for it,” he said. “I think in some way that money will have to be used for the ambulance situation.”
He is, however, willing to consider drawing on the principal to get things done. “I think everything has to be open,” he said of funding sources. “It was never a consideration to spend money we didn’t have,” he said of managing his township’s finances.
Morales thinks the vast majority of the principal should be reserved, but “the less that we can burden the taxpayer the better it’s going to be.” So before passing a local income tax, he thinks the county needs to have a deep discussion of what problems the increased revenue would solve. Will it provide more law enforcement? How will the money be distributed?
He said volunteer first responders absolutely would need to be included in the funding stream a public safety tax would provide and said some kind of volunteer metric should have been passed many years ago. Those with experience in police and fire need to be included in the conversation, and from all corners of the county as “everybody’s concerns are different in different parts of the county.”
Morales said he’s been trying to help Lakes of the Four Seasons get a fire territory since 2007. “I think they’re on the right track,” he said, adding that the residents on the Lake County side paying a higher tax rate than those on the Porter County side complicates things.
“Those are the kinds of things that have to be brought to the public’s attention,” he said. But ultimately it comes down to “how fast do you want the ambulance to come to your house?” he said.
Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
