$864 million earmarks sought

North Coast Reps. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, and Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, have requested more than $864 million in federal spending, known as earmarks, mostly on projects within their districts.

They range from $85,000 for the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center in Santa Rosa to $80 million each for marine sanctuary programs and for a Commerce Department Pacific Coastal Salmon Restoration fund.

Included in the hundreds of requests for $5 million from Woolsey and $6.5 million from Thompson for the Sonoma Mountain Business Cluster in Rohnert park, a non-profit group proposing a Center for American Laser Innovations that would generate applications for NASA.

And Thompson has requested $350,000 in Homeland Security funds to restore the antique Coast Guard lighthouse lens in Ferndale, and to create a "museum-quality facility" to display it.

Some of Thompson's and Woolsey's requests are for the same projects. And some match requests being made by other members of Congress.

Woolsey, whose district covers Marin and most of Sonoma County, requested more than $477 million in the upcoming federal budget year for 92 specific projects.

Thompson, whose district stretches over seven counties from Windsor to the Oregon border, asked for more than $387 million for 128 projects.

The amount ultimately authorized by Congress is certain to be far less than that, and while controversy over earmarks continues, the process has become more transparent, experts said.

"The ultimate ethics committee is the American people," said Bill Allison, editorial director of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan research organization.

Taken en masse, billions of dollars in earmark spending may seem like "pork and waste," Allison said, but taken one-by-one many are "useful projects."

Woolsey and Thompson submitted funding requests for city and county governments, law enforcement and transportation agencies, hospitals and non-profit organizations throughout their districts.

Thompson, a fiscal conservative, said it was "more important than ever" to spend federal money on local projects in a slumping economy.

"These are important projects to the people of our district, and they create jobs and generate economic growth," he said in a statement.

&‘This is not pork'

Among the items on Woolsey's list was $6.1 million for a North Bay recycled water storage and distribution system proposed by the Sonoma County Water Agency.

"This is not pork," agency spokesman Brad Sherwood said. "This is essential funding for a necessary infrastructure project."

The federal money is a 25 percent match to go with 75 percent local funding, Sherwood said, and without the federal contribution the recycled water project cannot move forward.

Last year, Woolsey requested nearly $285 million for 84 projects. She ultimately secured just over $29 million, an aide said.

Thompson requested almost $395 million in earmarks last year, and an aide said she did not know how much he secured.

Rank and file House members typically win about $26 million a year in earmarks, Allison said. Top leaders get substantially more, and a member in a tough re-election fight might also get more "to show how he brings home the bacon," he said.

Critics contend that earmark spending does not get public scrutiny during committee hearings and that taxpayer dollars can end up benefitting campaign donors.

Honoring restrictions

Congress last year spent $11 billion on disclosed earmarks, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan organization. That amounts to less than 1 percent of the federal budget, a spokesman for House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, D-Wis., told The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper.

Obey banned earmarks to all for-profit organizations this year, and House Republicans announced a one-year moratorium on all earmark requests. All but about six Republicans honored it, Allison said.

The Senate has imposed no earmark restrictions, he said.

Woolsey said this was the fourth year in a row she has listed all her earmarks on her Web site. The Sunlight Foundation said that 2009 was the first year all earmarks were disclosed by both parties in the House and Senate.

What isn't disclosed, Allison said, is the ranking or priority lawmakers assign to their funding requests, knowing they will not all be approved.

"They want to be able to show that they are working hard for their constituency," he said.

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

com.