Houston & Texas News

March 23, 2008, 2:13AM

Texas reaps $2.2 billion in earmarks

By BENNETT ROTH and PATRICK BRENDEL
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Texas corralled $2.2 billion in special projects from the federal government this year, including $294,000 for a Houston zoo program and $22 million for an Army gymnasium near El Paso.

While presidential contenders and some Congress members debated whether the projects, called earmarks, bloat the budget, the Lone Star State was awarded 539 of them for the current fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

Only California was given more goodies, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis.

Big-ticket defense and water items, such as a $17-million Corps of Engineers project for the Houston Ship Channel, made up the biggest chunk of the earmarks, which are legislative orders for agencies to spend specified sums on projects. But other organizations such as the Houston Zoo also got a piece of the earmark pie.

Actually, the zoo received two earmark projects, $294,000 for hospitalized children to interact with animals via television, and another $97,000 for educational programming.

Leslie Paige, a spokeswoman for Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group, said the decision to fund such projects as the zoo's were unfair. They were not awarded on their merits but by a secretive process in which the authors of spending bills selected the projects.

"A lot of it is sub rosa, under the radar," Paige said."There is no way to determine whether one project is more deserving."

She added, "Why should a person in Seattle or Michigan be paying for the Houston Zoo?"

With the federal deficit surpassing $263 billion this year and the economy in a slowdown, Congress has increasingly come under fire from critics — including the GOP's presumptive presidential candidate, John McCain, and Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — for approving earmarks. Among other arguments, they say the grants distort budget priorities and evade scrutiny.

Earlier this month, the Senate turned back an effort to place a one-year moratorium on earmarks.

One of those who rose to support earmarks was Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. She argued that spending decisions on local projects should not be turned over to federal bureaucrats in Washington who "may never have visited Texas." But Texas' other senator, Republican John Cornyn, who is running for re-election and garnered $154 million in earmarks, supported the ban. "Many Texans," he said, "are tired of the politics-as-usual, pork-barrel spending that is driving up our federal debt."

The catalyst for reform was the Bridge to Nowhere, a $223 million earmark project that connected Ketchikan, Alaska, a city of 8,900 people, to the nearby island of Gravina, which had about 50 residents and an airport. The public outrage that arose over the the bridge in 2005 brought pressure on Congress to reform the earmark process. Since then, proponents of the grants have been quick to underscore the community value of their projects.

In light of this debate, the Chronicle, using a database supplied by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog organization, examined every earmark won by a Texas member of Congress in 2007. The Chronicle analyzed the spending projects by region, author and subject matter.

Here are some of the conclusions:

•Earmarks are bipartisan. Sen. Hutchison was the state's most successful proponent of such spending in 2007, bringing home $254 million in projects. Every other Texas lawmaker in Congress except one, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas, sought them.

•Military and water projects accounted for nearly 85 percent of the funding of Texas' earmarks. The military projects included the construction of barracks and other facilities designed to improve the lives of the troops. The water projects included flood-control and dredging programs.

•Nearly half of earmark spending, or about $1 billion, went to just two cities, El Paso and San Antonio, sites of major military installations. The Houston area, by contrast, ran a distant third, taking in $270 million in earmark projects, or about 1 in every 9 of the state's earmark dollars.

•Art and cultural affairs offerings — the frequent flash-points for critics — amounted to less than one-third of 1 percent of the state's earmark spending.

In nabbing the projects, congressional rank had its benefits. The top House recipient of earmarks in Texas this year was Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, an influential Appropriations subcommittee chairman who sponsored or co-sponsored with other lawmakers $128 million worth of projects.

Being a vulnerable member of the majority party also helped. Democrat Rep. Nick Lampson of Stafford, who is fighting hard to keep the seat once held by Republican Tom DeLay of Sugar Land, brought home $42 million in earmarks this year.

In the Houston area, Lampson was surpassed only by veteran Democrat congressman Gene Green, who sponsored $44 million in earmarks, and Republican Rep. John Culberson, a member of the Appropriations Committee. He nabbed $43 million in projects.

Houston lawmakers near the bottom of the earmarks list hold relatively safe seats. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee requested $7.6 million of the projects, and Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, was responsible for $7.7 million.

The Bush administration sponsored or co-sponsored 74 projects worth $1.6 billion in earmarks in Texas, most for big-ticket military construction.

The state won 18 earmarks worth about $6 million for a variety of cultural projects, including the Pearl Fincher Arts Museum in Spring, the Audie Murphy American Cotton Museum in the North Texas town of Greenville and a museum marking the site of a World War II prisoner-of-war camp in the Central Texas community of Hearne.

Other earmarks included agricultural research programs, such as a $242,000 project for bee studies at the Agriculture Research Service in Weslaco in Central Texas and a $111,000 grant for dairy and goat research at Prairie View A&M University.

Culberson, who co-sponsored the $294,000 earmark for the Houston Zoo with Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, said he believed federal spending should be limited to basic functions such as national security, border protection, transportation and medical research.

But, Culberson said, he supported the earmark because it also involved medical institutions. The money will help the zoo set up a television-and-remote-control system allowing children undergoing treatment at Texas Children's Hospital, Shriner's Hospital for Children and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center to interact with animals.

Culberson said he rejected a request from the zoo for another earmark for the program for the next fiscal year because of his concerns over the increasing national debt.

The second zoo earmark for the education program was sponsored by Hutchison.

The Houston Fire Museum also got an earmark — a $245,000 grant that the museum's executive director, Emily Ponte, said would help lure private and public dollars needed for a proposed $9.5 million educational facility in downtown Houston.

"I'm just tickled pink that our request made it at such a high level," said Ponte, who emphasized that a central theme of her museum is homeland security. The earmark was secured by Jackson Lee.

Ginni Whitten, who helped write a request for the $98,000 earmark to the Pearl Fincher Art Museum in Spring, maintained that the museum is not another pork barrel project,

The earmark, sponsored by Rep. Poe, will help ensure that children in northwest Harris County can view fine works of art. The museum, which will operate in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is scheduled to open this spring. It intends to use the grant to build a covered walkway to connect the museum to an adjacent county library as well as provide lighting and handicapped ramps.

Without the federal earmark, museum director Tim Novak said, "people would be walking through the rain and it would be dark."

bennett.roth@chron.com

patrick.brendel@chron.com

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5641050.html