Plan includes earmarks for local projects

Tucked into a congressional spending package criticized as being full of pork are earmarks designed to keep Richmond County streets safer and quieter and residents healthier.

A $760,000 barrier on Bobby Jones Expressway will reduce noise around Glenn Hills Drive, $350,000 will furnish Richmond County sheriff's deputies with in-car computers and $285,000 will train health professionals at Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctors Hospital.

Sheriff's Col. Gary Powell said the agency relies on outside funding to put computers in patrol cars. The earmarks will fund new computers for cars.

Ten members of Georgia's 15-member congressional delegation attached 150 earmarks totaling more than $90 million to the omnibus spending bill approved last week, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan government watchdog committed to ending wasteful spending.

That works out to $9.31 for every Georgian. The per capita dollar figure is lower than all but one state: Arizona.

South Carolina came in at No. 38 with $15.83 for every resident.

Earmarks have become synonymous with pork -- wasteful government spending. But one person's pork barrel project is another person's legitimate expenditure, said Thomas P. Lauth, the dean of the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs.

"It's probably incorrect to start with the premise that earmarks are wasteful spending," Dr. Lauth said in a telephone interview, adding that he isn't so naive as to think egregious spending doesn't occur.

Earmarks are one way for elected officials to represent their constituents, he said. The earmark process allows lawmakers to inject projects into federal bills that would not have been able to compete in the larger budget process, but are important to the local community the lawmaker represents.

Georgia's earmarks include $209,000 for an initiative to improve blueberry production, $346,000 to study the effects of stinkbugs on cotton, $300,000 for the preservation of a 1925 coach stop in Savannah, $333,000 for Warner Robins' Museum of Aviation and $285,000 for an industrial park in Homerville, a south Georgia community of 2,800 people.

"It's a process that works well, but ultimately earmarks get caricatured as wasteful spending," Dr. Lauth said.

Earmarks aren't additional spending, but rather money set aside in the budget as discretionary spending, he said.

Jeffrey Lazarus, a Georgia State University assistant professor of political science, said he opposes a process occurring in relative obscurity without merit review. One congressman has already been jailed for his earmark spending and others are under investigation, he said.

"Earmarks are just another brand of pork barrel projects," Dr. Lazarus said.

The most recent federal spending bill is 8,500 pages and was handed to Congress 24 hours before its vote, making it impossible for lawmakers to know what is in it, he said.

Nationally, earmarks are unpopular, but to the local community receiving particular earmarks they are popular, Dr. Lazarus said.

No earmarks were directly attributed to five members of the Georgia delegation, all Republicans, including Rep. Paul Broun, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.

"The congressman has promised not to make any earmarks or request any earmarks until the process is fundamentally changed," said Pepper Pennington, his press secretary.

Mr. Broun's criticism is of the process, which should be transparent and require a debate on the House floor, Ms. Pennington said. The congressman wants to lead by example.

Taxpayers for Common Sense credited Republican Phil Gingrey with the state's highest earmark funding from solo earmarks with $31.5 million, most of which were for water and infrastructure projects.

"I think the number is a little misleading," Mr. Gingrey's press secretary, Chris Jackson, said.

The projects earmarked by the congressman were placed in the budget by President Bush and would have been funded regardless of the congressman's actions, Mr. Jackson said. Mr. Gingrey earmarked the items as a show of support for the projects.

Earmark projects can be helpful, particularly if you're transparent about what you're doing, said a spokeswoman for Rep. John Barrow.

"The 12th District appropriations requests that were included in the omnibus bill will greatly benefit the communities they are going to," press secretary Jane Brodsky wrote in an e-mail.

U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss stands by his earmark requests, and that's why he posted them online months ago, press secretary Ashley Nelson said. He voted three times to cut all earmarks out of the omnibus bill.

"Sen. Chambliss has always supported eliminating earmarks," Ms. Nelson said. "But as long as the rules allow him to request worthwhile projects to help Georgians, he will continue to do so."

The senator's office defended the "targeted expenditures," saying they were requested before the economy fell on hard times. The requests, however, should stimulate business and investment. The blueberry research and coach stop are economic investments, which are expected to generate revenue and supply jobs.

Despite efforts to reform the process, Dr. Lazarus said the number of earmarks is growing and he doesn't expect the practice to go away anytime soon.

Reach Greg Gelpi at (706) 828-3851 or greg.gelpi@augustachronicle.com.