The Lake County Commissioners refused Friday morning to veto a local income tax.
Commissioner Gerry Scheub, D-Crown Point made five motions to veto a package of ordinances that imposes a 1.5 percent tax on the personal income of all county residents and out-of-state residents working in Lake.
Five times the veto requests died for lack of support from Commissioners Mike Repay, D-Hammond, and Roosevelt Allen, D-Gary, who sat silently through most of the meeting.
The tax goes into effect this year.
The outcome stunned both tax proponents and protesters.
Repay had repeatedly said he couldn't support or vote for the tax because he had promised his constituents he wouldn't.
Repay said after the meeting, "This was not a decision I made easily or overnight. But, I feel I was elected for more than one issue."
Some tax opponents among the early morning crowd of about 30 in the Syd Garner Auditorium of the Lake County Government Center lashed out at him when the meeting adjourned.
"Who got to you, Repay?" St. John Republican activist Joe Hero shouted.
Others claimed Repay was doing the bidding of Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr., the county Democratic party chairman, and a tax supporter.
Repay said it was his own decision, driven by concern that if the tax hadn't passed in its present form, the state legislature might enact future special legislation to divert any subsequent tax to special interests, like economic development projects outside county government control. He said that nearly happened in this year's session. "It could have been a lot worse," Repay said.
Lake County Council President Ted Bilski, D-Hobart, had predicted Thursday that if the tax was vetoed and the council failed to override, county officials would have had to have slashed $20 million from the budgets of every county government department whose services aren't mandated by state law.
County officials said reductions in property tax revenues already have forced them to cut tens of millions of dollars from their budget and eliminated more than 300 jobs in the last three years. The income tax would have replaced some of that lost money.
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