Obama administration tries to find homes for $1.9B in 'orphaned' earmarks
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is freeing up $1.9 billion in so-called "orphan" earmarks, five years after a USA TODAY investigation discovered that billions in highway funds authorized by Congress were stuck in a bureaucratic no man's land.
New guidance released by the U.S. Department of Transportation Tuesday allows states to move federal funds previously assigned to politically connected projects to other priorities. Because Congress had earmarked that money for specific pet projects in previous spending bills, only Congress could free up the money — which it did in the omnibus spending bill last year.
“This is a tremendous opportunity for state and local governments to work together to identify their needs heading into the next 30 years,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement.
Earmarking was the controversial practice of loading up spending bills with specific projects benefiting the home districts of members of Congress. The earmarks became emblematic of pork barrel spending, turning the $223 million "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska into a national laughingstock.
But a 2011 USA TODAY investigation found that even unspent earmarks took a toll, depriving their states of highway funding they otherwise would have gotten. State transportation officials called these earmarks to nowhere "orphan" earmarks. Federal officials call them "idle" earmarks.
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By the time the House of Representatives banned earmarks in 2011, there were $13 billion in unspent earmarks throughout the country.
Decades later, millions in 'orphan' earmarks remain unspent
More than 3,649 projects had never spent a single earmarked dollar. The reasons were varied: In some cases, the earmark was poorly written — as with an Indiana project misnaming the highway to be built as State Road 31 instead of U.S. Route 31. In others, the project was already paid for — as with then-Sen. Barack Obama's earmark for the Grand Avenue overpass in Franklin Park, Ill. And in some cases, the project simply collapsed before it could break ground.
For example: In 2005, then-U.S. Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio, earmarked more than $7 million for a ferry service to take cars and passengers from Cleveland to Port Stanley, Ontario. But opposition to the project surfaced in Ontario, and logistical problems in Cleveland couldn't be solved. The result: All of the $7 million remains unspent.
And and because the earmark came out of the formula funding Ohio was already guaranteed to get, the project's collapse cost the state $7 million. The Ohio Department of Transportation said Tuesday that it was reviewing the guidance to see how it might spend its total of $24.4 million in unused earmarks.
The guidance published Tuesday allows states to tap old earmarks for new projects — but only where less than 10% of the earmark has been spent after 10 years.
States that could potentially recover the most money are New York ($207 million), Georgia ($161 million), California ($126 million), New Jersey ($116 million) and Pennsylvania ($99 million).
Under the policy announced Tuesday, states must apply to move the earmarked money to a new project by Sept. 12, and must spend it within three years.