Funding for state hits snag

Irrigation projects face earmarks ban

— With the announcement last week that Sen. John Boozman has joined the Senate Appropriations Committee, making him the third Arkansas lawmaker now sitting on a congressional spending panel, it would appear that Arkansas is well positioned to secure federal dollars for state projects.

But two years ago Congress outlawed earmarks - money tucked into larger bills that is directed to specific projects in lawmakers’ states. And the state’s two other lawmakers who sit on appropriations panels - Sen. Mark Pryor and Rep. Steve Womack - say the committee’s power has been eclipsed by the Obama administration.

In the past, in order to get an off-ramp, sewer plant or hospital funded in his district, the first place a lawmaker went was to the Appropriations Committee, which writes the spending bills for Congress. Better still, if he had a seat on the powerful panel, he could weigh in personally with its chairman and appeal directly to federal agency heads.

That’s precisely what Pryor, a Democrat, and Womack, a Republican, tried to do for two U.S. Army Corps of Engineers irrigation projects in the state, the Bayou Meto Project and the Grand Prairie Area Demonstration Project. But in the era of no earmarks, their efforts were largely hampered by the administration, which did not consider them a priority, and by other appropriations members, who thought the Arkansans’ requests ran afoul of the earmark ban.

Womack said the ban has obliterated what he terms Congress’ main function: to decide how taxpayer money is spent.

“It’s our job,” Womack said. “It’s what Congress does. If you decide never to have earmarks again, you’ve basically ceded that portion of government to the executive branch.”

The two irrigation projects, which have cost U.S.taxpayers about $161 million so far and have a total price tag in excess of $1 billion, are designed to siphon water from the Arkansas and White rivers to be used by farmers. Doing so, proponents argue, would allow underground aquifers to replenish.

In the end, the two projects received far less than the $17 million that Pryor had originally requested for them. To get the $10 million that they did receive involved a twisted, convoluted process and several near-death experiences.

Pryor requested $17 million in the Corps of Engineers budget for the projects, but because of the earmarks ban, his bid was made in very general terms, meaning that the money could be spent on projects that generally fit the description of those two irrigation projects.

Last year, in the weeks leading up to the Feb. 13 release of President Barack Obama’s budget proposal, Pryor said he met with Jo Ellen Darcy, the Corps of Engineers chief, who assured him that the money would be in the budget.

But three days later, Pryor said, Darcy called him with a message: After consulting with Obama’s budgeting agency, the Office of Management and Budget, she was told to tell him that the funding would not be included.

Pryor said that set off a number of tense calls from his office to the Office of Management and Budget, including to acting Director Jeffrey Zients, who wouldn’t budge on the Bayou Meto project. But $592,000 was allotted for the Grand Prairie project, far less than Pryor’s request.

Pryor said the episode has damaged his trust in the Obama administration. “OMB pulled the rug out from under us with no warning,” he said. “They think they’re the whole ball of wax. I don’t appreciate the way they’ve been so highhanded about it.”

Through a spokesman, Darcy declined to comment for this article, and officials with the Office of Management and Budget did not return calls or e-mails.

In a 2010 blog post that referred directly to funding the Corps’ Mississippi River and tributary projects, Peter Orszag who was then director of the agency, defended the Office of Management and Budget’s approach on funding the Corps.

“The old ways of Washington pork-barrel spending were replaced with merit-based, priority-centered investments,” he said.

Corps projects have been ground zero in the debate over earmarks because Congress and the agency have always had a difficult time prioritizing the Corps’ backlog of projects, said Pete Sepp, executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Union, a Virginia anti-tax group.

Sepp said the Office of Management and Budget leaving projects like Bayou Meto and Grand Prairie off its funding list was an attempt to prioritize the Corps’ project list. In an ideal world, Sepp said, the administration would involve Congress more in ranking projects but past earmark abuse has eroded the legislative branch’s credibility and led to the ban on earmarks.

“It was Congress’ poor decision-making that got us here in the first place,” he said of the ban.

A big problem with the two Arkansas projects, Sepp said, is that they fall outside of the Corps’ main tasks of controlling flooding - through dikes, levees and dams - and building ship navigation routes.

“These are orphan projects that are in search of an agency that can oversee and fund them,” Sepp said of the Arkansas projects. “But in a tight fiscal environment, there are a lot of other orphans.”

UNDAUNTED, PRESSING ON

Getting rebuffed by the Office of Management and Budget was hardly the end of the line for Pryor, Womack and others in the state delegation seeking funding for the two projects.

After the president’s budget request was delivered to Congress, the appropriations committees gave the administration 45 days to come up with a spending plan for various line items in the Corps’ budget. Of particular interest to the Arkansas contingent was the line that spelled out funding for “other authorized purposes” in the Mississippi River and tributaries portion of the Corps budget.

Despite the Arkansas lawmakers’ hopes, funding for the two projects remained absent.

But, the Corps can “reprogram” money - shift it between accounts - although it needs approval from appropriations committees if the amount exceeds $50,000.

The Corps circulated a reprogramming draft to the House and Senate with funding for the Bayou Meto and Grand Prairie projects, but the measure ran aground in the House Appropriations Committee.

One reason, Womack said, was that members of the committee thought the request was too specific. It likely would have been considered an earmark if it had been presented for an actual vote, he said.

“If it looks like an earmark and walks like an earmark, it’s probably going to be assumed that it is an earmark,” Womack said.

He said his first two years in the House taught him a lot about how projects get funded, and he blamed the administration for failing to put the projects in the budget in the first place.

“I’m learning as an appropriator that there’s a lot of finesse work that goes on in between the administration and the appropriation committees. There are certain things [the administration assumes] Congress is going to want to fund so ‘we don’t have to worry about this,’” he said. “I’m not real hip on that finesse work.”

Womack said he made a case for the irrigation projects to Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican who is chairman of the appropriations committee’s energy and water subcommittee.

“I approached him not once, but twice,” Womack said. “Maybe three times.”

Frelinghuysen declined to comment for this article.

A Republican committee staff member said the request met with resistance from the chairman because it would have meant taking money from flood-control projects that were seen as a priority after the Mississippi River flooding in 2011.

“It’s not free money,” said the staff member. “It has to be taken from somewhere else.”

Undaunted, state delegation members - led by Pryor - managed to secure $10 million for the two projects for this fiscal year.

He did that by inserting the appropriation language in a continuing resolution that Congress passed in September to keep the government running. With most lawmakers focused at the time on the November election and on avoiding a government financial shutdown, the two irrigation projects were a minuscule part of the larger bill that was considered essential and passed.

But there was still a hitch. To be funded in a continuing resolution, projects must have previously received non-earmark funding. So, the Grant Prairie project - with it’s $529,000 approved - qualified, but the Bayou Meto project did not. To get funding under the continuing resolution, the Corps ultimately reprogrammed $49,999 - under its $50,000 limit - for the Bayou Meto project.

With the current government spending resolution due to expire in March, Pryor and Womack said, they will again push to put funding for the irrigation projects in any extension legislation. They also plan to pursue funding in the budget for fiscal 2014, which begins Oct. 1.

Meanwhile, other members of the Arkansas delegation have looked into other avenues to secure funding for the projects, both of which are in U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford’s district.

Crawford said his office has consulted with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to get low-interest loans under the USDA’s rural development program. But that would require getting a USDA waiver because rural development loans are intended for drinking-water and sewer projects, not irrigation projects.

Crawford argues that completion of Grand Prairie and Bayou Meto would benefit drinking-water systems by taking pressure off of the underground aquifers in the area.

But, he said, there is a $5 million backlog of other projects in line for loans.

“It’s going to be really tough because of the backlog and the projects ahead of us in line,” Crawford said.

Also, Boozman said he will push for the two projects in the Appropriations Committee.

He said he would also push for a provision in the Water Resources Development Act, which authorizes Corps of Engineers programs, that would allow states and localities to get credit for funds they’ve put into projects. Both of the Arkansas projects are funded through a 65-35 percent federal-state match. Boozman said he wants to make sure that - if federal funds increase in the future - the state gets credit for money it spent on the projects in years when the federal government doesn’t offer its full share.

Crawford’s predecessor, Marion Berry, was on the appropriations committee in 2006 and said he wanted to be known as the king of pork.

Now, the arduous process in securing funding rankles Crawford. “People expect their congressmen to work for them and do everything they can do to secure valid projects,” Crawford said. “The earmark-ban sort of clips our wings.”

That’s been the case with the irrigation projects. And with the president’s budget request for fiscal 2014 due early next month and wrangling expected on a continuing resolution to keep government funded through the October end of fiscal 2013, the fight for the irrigation projects is about to start all over again.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/07/2013

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