Earmarks for North Coast projects

Two North Coast members of Congress -- Reps. Lynn Woolsey and Mike Thompson -- have reeled in nearly $115 million in federal funding for their districts.

Flood control and water projects received the bulk of the local funding, known as earmarks, lumped into a $555 billion spending bill signed last week by President Bush. Millions also went to protecting grapevines from a deadly disease, salmon restoration and supporting work on a proposed Cloverdale to Larkspur rail line.

Woolsey, a Petaluma Democrat whose district covers Marin and most of Sonoma County, accounted for $12.5 million in earmarks, according to a list provided by her staff.

Thompson, D-St. Helena, who represents the sprawling coastal district from Sonoma and Napa counties to the Oregon border, claimed $102.2 million in earmarks, also according to a staff-compiled list.

But both claimed a $7.4 million appropriation for Warm Springs Dam operations as well as a $1.96 million earmark for the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit project.

In all, the omnibus spending bill included 8,983 congressional earmarks totaling $7.4 billion, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, an independent fiscal watchdog. A separate defense appropriations bill included 2,162 earmarks for $7.9 billion, putting the fiscal year 2008 total at more than $15 billion.

An earmark is a line item inserted into a House or Senate bill directing funds to a specific project or recipient without public hearing or review. Critics, including the president, deride earmarks as a wasteful and secretive way of spending taxpayers' dollars. But others call it business as usual on Capitol Hill.

"This is the pork process as we know it," said Barbara O'Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and the Media at California State University, Sacramento. "It's been going on for years."

Former Congressman Doug Bosco, now a Santa Rosa attorney, went farther, calling earmarks "the highest priority for any member of Congress" and a perfect way of judging a federal lawmaker.

"That's what you are, you're a breadwinner for your district," Bosco said. "If you don't bring things home for your district, either you're stupid, incompetent or you don't know the ropes."

Thompson's largest earmark -- $67 million for the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund -- was split among five Western states, including California.

His other large item was $28.4 million to combat Pierce's disease, a fatal grapevine affliction spread by the glassy-winged sharpshooter.

The Warm Springs Dam and SMART earmarks accounted for three-quarters of Woolsey's total. Thompson listed more than $50 million in flood control, dredging, dam operations and other water projects.

Details on the earmarks were not available last week as congressional offices in Washington were closed for the holidays.

"Comparatively speaking, Sonoma County did well in the omnibus appropriations bill, especially in light of the budget deficit," Woolsey said in a written statement.

The eight-term congresswoman complained that the earmark process is weighted in favor of lawmakers with clout. "In contrast to committee chairs, rank and file members' districts have not been treated as well," Woolsey said. "This needs to change."

But O'Connor said that Woolsey and Thompson both benefitted from the Democrats' winning control of Congress last year.

"When you're in the majority, you get more money," she said.

Earmarks are typically attached to major bills that the president is obliged to sign, O'Connor said. Since the president lacks line-item veto power, it's the best way Democrats have of funding pet projects when Republicans hold the White House, and vice versa, she said.

The $555 billion omnibus bill included $70 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the president wanted. Bush complained about the nearly 9,000 earmarks, saying they were "not funded through a merit-based process and provide a vehicle for wasteful government spending."

But some government spending critics noted that congressional earmarks accounted for just 1.3 percent of the bill.

The Sunlight Foundation, another fiscal watchdog, says there is "no transparency or accountability" in the earmarks process. Lawmakers can secure millions for a project "without subjecting it to debate by their colleagues . . . or to the scrutiny and oversight of the public," the group said.

The House Rules Committee took a step toward transparency this year, posting online a list of earmarks and their House and Senate sponsors, said Anne Warden, a Thompson aide.

Earmarks got a black eye from Alaska's notorious "bridge to nowhere," a $230 million item tucked into the 2005 transportation bill and championed by Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, then head of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Stevens threatened to resign if the funding was dropped, but it was and he didn't.

Most earmarks are for public improvements, like harbors and highways, that the average citizen would applaud, Bosco said.

Woolsey's smaller earmarks include $147,000 for the Sonoma County Council on Aging community kitchen, $98,307 for the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation's invasive weed eradication effort and $373,540 for Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital's intensive care unit.

"The definition of pork is it's in someone else's district," Bosco said.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.