WASHINGTON – A U.S. senator from Alabama directed more than $100 million in federal earmarks to renovate downtown Tuscaloosa near his own commercial office building.
A congressman from Georgia secured $6.3 million in taxpayer funds to replenish the beach about 900 feet from his island vacation cottage.
Thirty-three members of Congress have steered more than $300 million in earmarks and other spending provisions to dozens of public projects that are next to or within about two miles of the lawmakers’ own property, according to a Washington Post investigation.
Under the ethics rules Congress has written for itself, this is both legal and undisclosed.
The Post analyzed public records on the holdings of all 535 members and compared them with earmarks that members had sought for pet projects, most of them since 2008.
The process uncovered appropriations for work in proximity to commercial and residential real estate owned by the lawmakers or their family members.
The review also found 16 lawmakers who sent tax dollars to companies, colleges or community programs where their spouses, children or parents work as salaried employees or serve on boards.
In recent weeks, lawmakers have acknowledged the public’s growing concern that they appeared to be using their positions to enrich themselves. In response, the Senate last week passed legislation that would require lawmakers to disclose mortgages for their residences.
The bill, known as the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, would also require lawmakers and executive branch officials to disclose securities trades of more than $1,000 every 30 days. At the same time, the Senate defeated an amendment, 59-40, that would have permanently outlawed earmarks.
The House is scheduled to vote on the bill Thursday.
Earmarks have long been controversial, with the focus on spending that unduly favors campaign donors or constituents.
Earmarks are a fraction of the federal budget, and the numbers uncovered by The Post are relatively small in the scheme of the overall Congress, but the behavior by lawmakers from both parties points to a larger issue at a time when public confidence in Capitol Hill is at an all-time low.
The congressional financial disclosure system obscures certain relationships. Lawmakers are not required to disclose the addresses of their personal residences or the employment of their children and parents.
The Post compared the disclosure forms with the public record to track spending on projects near legislators’ properties or on programs employing their relatives.
In interviews, lawmakers said their earmarks were needs brought to them by the city and state officials they represent to help pay for safer roads, nicer neighborhoods or improved local economies.
They characterized questions about the nearby locations of their own holdings as irrelevant, insisting there is no conflict. Any potential personal benefit – financial or otherwise – is nonexistent, minimal or secondary to the needs of the public, they said.
Mere proximity to a lawmaker’s property does not establish that an earmark was unwarranted. In some cases, the public benefit of the spending was large, improving life for thousands. In others, the benefit appeared narrower.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., secured a $900,000 earmark that was used to resurface about two dozen roads in Mississippi in 2010. One of those was LC Turner Circle, a quarter-mile residential loop in the small town of Bolton, where Thompson and his daughter own two homes.
Thompson said it was one of numerous paving earmarks he secured for his district.
“I didn’t say, ‘Do the street that I live on,’ ” Thompson said. “The earmark went to the county. It had no designation on it whatsoever, and that was it.”
Bolton Mayor Lawrence Butler said city leaders chose to repave the street, where about 48 families live, because “it had gone to the dogs.”
Lawmakers create earmarks by inserting provisions to legislation, steering or adding federal funds for projects and programs not requested by the executive branch.
Earmark decisions are made behind closed doors in committee rooms and rarely debated on the floor of the House or Senate. The more powerful the member, the more likely he or she is able to get an earmark through.
The practice has long been a lightning rod for criticism. Then-speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., caused a scandal in 2006 when it was revealed that he had inserted a $207 million earmark to build a highway near property he owned in Illinois.
Yet earmarking shot to new levels in the past decade as hundreds of lawmakers stuffed bills with pet projects. In 2010, the number of earmarks hit a new high: 11,320, worth $32 billion.
