For Reid, securing pork a priority

Benjamin Grove

Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2000 | 11:19 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Las Vegas businessman Jerome Snyder hit a jackpot when Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., slipped $2 million into a congressional spending bill that will help expand his fledgling company.

Snyder's Certified Airline Passenger Service allows guests at 10 Strip resorts to pick up airplane boarding passes and check their bags at the hotel.

The system one day could alleviate airport crowding nationwide, Reid said. "This is the wave of the future."

But critics call it pork. And observers say lawmakers are serving their home states more special projects than ever.

"We expect a record year in the number of pork projects and in dollars," said David Williams, research director for Citizens Against Government Waste.

Leading the charge against pork is Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. He says "pork" is money allocated outside the traditional budget process, or locality-specific money sought by lawmakers, not government agencies.

Congress is striving to finish work on its 13 annual spending bills, and lawmakers already have slipped $21 billion in pork projects into four bills funding the nation's military construction, transportation, defense and interior, McCain said.

Many of Nevada's pork projects have been secured by Reid. He has access to the spending bills as an Appropriations Committee member.

Nevada's pork total isn't clear yet. McCain's list of pork projects for just two bills -- energy/water and interior -- listed 25 projects for Nevada this year. They include $500,000 for water recycling in Southern Nevada, $600,000 to clean up Northern Nevada rivers for the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout and $1 million for water projects in the Moapa Valley.

Nevada received $76.4 million in total pork last year, according to Citizens Against Government Waste.

Reid shrugs off critics such as McCain.

"Mostly, it's a bunch of people who are jealous -- whiners," Reid said.

Reid proudly displays his pork projects like "a badge that says I'm doing a good job."

Reid was happy to help Snyder, who will expand his business more quickly thanks to the $2 million in federal aid.

The money will finance the work of a group that includes Certified Airline Passenger Service; UNLV; University of California, Los Angeles; Unisys Corp.; Delta and/or Southwest airlines; and possibly Los Angeles International Airport. The consortium's experts will develop a plan for Snyder's idea to be used at airports nationwide.

So Snyder, with little competition so far, expects big profits -- soon.

"This is not a study," Reid said. "We know it works in Nevada. We want to develop it elsewhere."

Snyder said soon travelers will check bags at their hotels, businesses, convention centers, rent-a-car lots, airport parking lots and other remote sites, shortening lines at airports.

"I went to Sen. Reid and said not only is what we're doing very important to Nevada, it's important domestically, internationally and it will change the industry as we know it," Snyder said.

Washington watchdog groups say projects are supposed to originate with a budget request from a federal agency -- the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, for instance -- and then flow through congressional budget hearings.

But often lawmakers add money for projects in a hurried, last-minute negotiating session.

"It's a very simple process, but every year a number of projects find their way around it," Williams said.

For example, Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., led efforts to secure $500,000 for Nevada's Bighorn sheep. But Fish and Wildlife never requested the money.

Friends of the Nevada Wilderness asked Berkley for it. The group was concerned that Nellis Air Force Base was encroaching on herds roaming the Desert National Wildlife Refuge, about 30 miles northwest of Las Vegas, according to Jeremy Garncarz, the group's Southern Nevada organizer.

"The environmental community approached us," Berkley said.

So Berkley went to bat for the money, lobbied members of the Interior spending committees and sought out Reid to protect the money when House and Senate negotiators met to hammer out a final bill.

Now Fish and Wildlife is scrambling to develop specific plans for the funds.

"We weren't sure what the intent of Congress was on the $500,000," said David Patte, Fish and Wildlife budget director for the Pacific region, which includes Nevada.

Reid also secured $2 million in the energy/water bill to develop an earth-moving loader for mining that is powered by hydrogen fuel cells. The mining industry has been looking for a safer, quieter alternative to the 30-ton machines that belch dangerous diesel emissions while hauling blasted rock out of tunnels.

"Fuel-cell vehicles would solve all of these problems," said Arnold Miller, director of the Denver-based Fuel Cell Propulsion Institute, which along with the Nevada Mining Association encouraged Reid to secure the money.

Also lobbying Reid for the project: mining giant Barrick Gold Corp., a frequent donor to Reid and other political campaigns in Nevada.

Other pork will be served in West Las Vegas. Typically, the Andre Agassi Boys and Girls Club gets most of its funding from private sources. But Berkley and Reid helped land $500,000 to help finance the club's 3,000-square-foot expansion: a game room, technology room and learning center already under construction.

"We made this a priority," Berkley said. "We fought hard and diligently to get it included in the bill."

The expansion will allow the club to host more teens than the 100 to 150 a day it accommodates now.

"The Las Vegas Boys and Girls Club has had the same kind of growth as the Valley," Director Debbie Verges said.

Berkley said she was convinced the club was a good investment of taxpayer dollars.

"Sen. McCain is showing his profound lack of understanding of Southern Nevada and ought to spend more time researching these things before he speaks out on issues he knows nothing about," Berkley said.