Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Slashing earmarks could hurt innocents

WASHINGTON - When Democrats announced a moratorium on all so-called earmarks to clean up corruption heading into the 110th Congress, they might not have realized they would be withholding funds from a popular and worthy nonprofit organization like Southern Nevada's Opportunity Village.

The organization, which provides job training and placement for developmentally disabled youths and adults, was counting on $500,000 tucked inside the massive Transportation, Housing and Urban Development bill pending before Congress to help fund its new campus in southwest Las Vegas.

But that allocation and more than 10,000 other pet projects of members of Congress will be on hold as Democrats fulfill a campaign promise to curtail earmarks, special funding slipped at the last minute into bills for projects in lawmakers' states or home districts, often without the sponsor's name attached.

The incoming chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations committees jointly announced last week that no earmarks would be allowed for fiscal 2007 as new "transparency and accountability" rules are established for 2008.

Ed Guthrie, executive director of Opportunity Village, is disappointed that his earmark is being stalled, but said if it "gets stopped this year, we'll try again."

Guthrie is all for earmark reform to clean up Washington, but argues that programs like his are not the problem.

The money for Opportunity Village was inserted into the bill with the help of Nevada's congressional delegation and would have gone toward its new $44 million campus, which is expected to serve 350 people daily when it opens in 2008.

"I don't see any problem with transparency and accountability with the earmarks they're going to give to Opportunity Village," he said. "We will work with the whole delegation to try to help us get additional earmarks once the process is reformed."

Democrats may have released a fury in their attempt to set new standards for the earmark process. Some lawmakers have vowed to battle for pet projects that they believe are worthwhile and should not be tarnished by the Washington scandals that brought heightened scrutiny to earmarks, which made headlines during the 109th Congress as they were linked to excessive spending and corruption.

Case after case unfolded over the past two years - including now-imprisoned California Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham trading bribes for earmarks and the Alaska delegation's $220 million earmark to connect a small island with an airport that became famously known as the "bridge to nowhere."

Democrats are considering new rules that, among other things, would require members to put their names on earmarks and disallow last-minute earmarks that get slipped into bills without debate.

Battle lines are being drawn between earmarks with full transparency and those done under cover.

"There is no doubt that the earmark process has been badly abused," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. But the projects that she has put her name to - $100,000 for a recreation center in North Las Vegas, $500,000 for Las Vegas Beltway improvements, funds for the Tropicana and Flamingo wash flood control projects, among others - are important, she said.

"For a growth community like Southern Nevada, those earmarks have been very beneficial and have enabled us to keep up with pressing growth," she said.

"I'm going to do everything I can to keep those in the budget. There is no 'bridge to nowhere' in the requests I have made. Every one of them is important, defensible, transparent and bears my name."

She and others were caught off-guard last week by the incoming Democratic chairmen's announcement.

As Democrats prepare to take control in January, they are saddled with the enormous task of passing nine of 11 spending bills left behind by Republicans for fiscal 2007, which started Oct. 1.

Rather than spend precious time on the bills as President Bush begins to lay out 2008 spending plans, the Democratic chairmen hope to instead pass a sweeping resolution to keep the government funded until of the end of the fiscal year Sept. 30.

There would be no earmarks in that measure, forcing supporters of all of the earmarks pending in the 2007 budget to try again next year.

Fiscal conservatives like earmark reform as a way to rein in government spending, noting that the cost of earmarks has doubled in the last decade to $29 billion.

Ronald D. Utt, senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, welcomed the chairmen's action, saying if Democrats are "serious about starting clean ... the best way to do it was to wipe out the earmarks of the previous Congress and start over."

But Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who had worked to secure funds for Opportunity Village and the Boulder City Bypass transportation project, among others, said sidelining the 2007 bills was unfortunate because they contain "many vital projects for our community."

Republican Sen. John Ensign's office would not disclose which earmarks it was hoping to have funded in the 2007 bills. But a spokesman said Nevada's junior senator looks forward to trying again under the new rules.

Senate Majority Leader-elect Harry Reid, who brings more dollars back to Nevada than any other member of the delegation - boosting the state to eighth in the nation for special earmarked spending in 2006 - "will continue to fight for Nevada's priorities," a spokesman said.

Faced with the new landscape, regional transportation officials met last week to plan their next move. The state had been poised to receive as much as $21 million for various road and freeway improvement projects, including the widening of State Route 160 between Las Vegas and Pahrump and interchange improvements on the beltway.

With the Nevada Transportation Department confronting a $3.8 billion shortfall for infrastructure improvements over the next decade, every dollar becomes crucial, spokesman Scott Magruder said.

"Obviously, we're disappointed," he said. "It's just going to make things a little tighter."

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