It's money time on the Hill

Letter from Washington: Lawmakers jockey to bring home the bacon.

BY DENA BUNIS

Washington Bureau Chief - Orange County

It's the spending season in the Capitol. And this year, the cloud of secrecy that has always surrounded the process by which lawmakers get money for their districts and states has been lifted – a little bit.

We probably have last year's elections and ethics scandals to thank for it.
The spending lawmakers are battling for are called earmarks. The term dates back to the 1600s. Back then, earmarks were cuts in the ears of sheep and cattle and served as a sign of ownership, like a brand. In legislative speak, earmarks are those things in a bill that are placed there at the behest of a particular lawmaker.

Up until this year, the earmarking process has been a totally secret one. There have been famous – or I should say infamous – earmarks over the years, most notably the bridge to nowhere in Alaska. Sen. Ted Stevens, probably the senator most known for his earmark prowess, succeeded in getting $223 million for a bridge to be built to Alaska's Ketchikan Island, where 50 people live.

These projects have traditionally appeared out of nowhere in these spending bills. You could find out the name of the project and how much money was being set aside for it. But there was no way to see which member asked for it, unless the member said something.

Most of the time lawmakers do crow about getting money for a local project. But not always. And rarely have they been willing to talk about the projects they couldn't get funded.

Some still aren't. This year, out of the six members who represent all or part of Orange County, Reps. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, John Campbell, R-Irvine and Ed Royce, R-Fullerton, released their earmark requests. Reps. Gary Miller, R-Diamond Bar and Loretta Sanchez, D-Garden Grove, did not. And both of California's Democratic senators – Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein – said no.
Miller's office said he wanted to negotiate with the appropriators for which projects would be funded – not publicly through the press.

Sanchez told me she didn't want those cities whose projects didn't get submitted to have hurt feelings and didn't want to pit one community against another when it comes to the federal funding process. And, she said, she worried about raising expectations since only a fraction of requests actually get funded. Feinstein's and Boxer's offices said something similar about raising expectations.

Now for the first time in the House and Senate, the earmarks listed in the spending bills will also say which member or senator requested them. And both chambers have asked lawmakers to sign a statement saying they won't benefit personally from these projects.

The request lists are a window into a member's thinking about what is important and about how they believe federal money should be spent.

Take Campbell. He only asked for two earmarks. And both were for projects first supported by his predecessor – former Rep. Christopher Cox.
Campbell really doesn't believe in earmarks. In fact he told me he'd prefer not to see any at all, and he has been part of a small group of GOP lawmakers who have been trying – unsuccessfully – to slash them from the spending bills.

Campbell's views on spending, of course, will not endear him to House appropriators and probably make it difficult for him to get any funding. As it happens, he wasn't the only lawmaker seeking support this year for the Upper Newport Bay dredging project. Besides him, Calvert, Royce and Sanchez asked Energy and Water appropriators for that project. They got some money – $1 million – but that's far short of the $14 million they asked for.

The process the lawmakers follow on these earmarks is pretty standard. They and/or their staffs meet with representatives from the cities, universities, counties and other government entities they represent. They take all the requests and then decide which are most important and go on to the appropriations panels.

Most of the members said they received fewer than 100 requests each year. The senators get many more. Feinstein's office reported getting 1,600 pitches this year. They wouldn't say how many requests the state's senior senator ended up putting in. But they expect to get up to maybe 10 percent of what she asks for.

That's the formal process. But what really makes or breaks a lawmaker's request is whether they have a good relationship with the cardinal of the subcommittee who has sway over their request. If they do, they may have to enlist the aid of a fellow member to help push something through. It's the ultimate who-you-know kind of game. These cardinals are the chairs of the dozen subcommittees that make up the powerful Appropriations Committee. And they aren't named after the bird. They are called cardinals because of the power they wield over these spending bills.

The statement that lawmakers have to sign saying they won't personally benefit from any of the earmarks they are requesting has given some of them pause. Staffers report that sometimes it's difficult to decide what to do about a particular project.

If a member lives or owns property near a proposed new freeway ramp or grade crossing, should he or she not put in for that project?
Campbell, whose family owns car dealerships throughout the region, decided he would not put in any transportation projects lest there be an appearance of a conflict.

Calvert, who owns property in and around his congressional district, decided to put in a request, for example, for a Corona Transit Center project. But the Corona Republican wrote a letter to the House ethics committee asking whether it would be a conflict for him to do so. They wrote him back saying it would not.

Calvert is now a member of the Appropriations Committee and as long as he stays on that panel he can expect to be lobbied from both ends on spending bills – by those seeking projects and by fellow lawmakers who want money for their districts.

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