Editorial: Alternatives to earmarks

Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2007 | 7:09 a.m.

Earmarks have come to have a bad reputation, and deservedly so. The term refers to money set aside by members of the U.S. House and Senate for special projects in their home states.

While earmarks, authorized by congressional rules, are not intrinsically bad, they came to be perceived that way after many members of Congress, over the years, began slipping them into the federal budget without any review by their colleagues and often at the last minute.

Many examples are on the record of lawmakers using earmarks to secure federal money for projects that should have been funded by local governments. Another common abuse was earmarking vast amounts of federal money for projects with little value, such as $223 million for Alaska's infamous "bridge to nowhere."

With such a track record, earmarks got lumped into the ethics scandals involving the relationship between members of Congress and lobbyists. In response, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., imposed a moratorium on earmarks for the current session of Congress.

While his action was necessary, it is affecting the types of projects for which earmarks were first intended. An example is grant money for UNLV. In 2006 the university received about $37 million from earmarks, much of which went into its research budget.

Under the moratorium, this money will dry up at a time when the university is striving to take its place alongside established research universities.

Christina Littlefield, the Las Vegas Sun's higher-education reporter, wrote Tuesday that earmarks have also helped UNLV professors develop expertise in areas important to Southern Nevada, such as nuclear waste transportation and renewable energy.

While the loss, at least for now, in earmark revenue is a blow to the university, we were impressed with the UNLV administration's attitude. Instead of complaining, it vowed to get better at applying for grant funds .

President David Ashley said that the more competitive that UNLV learns to be, the better its proposals will be, the better its researchers will be and the better, ultimately, its research will be. That's the spirit.