2011. The Year of the Rabbit, in the Chinese lunar calendar (emphasis: diplomacy). The Year of Forests and the Year of Chemistry, according to the United Nations. And, if incoming federal House and Senate GOP’s stick to their word, the Last-Ever Year of Earmarks.
Fat chance, say cynics. But it could happen. After all, earmarks are very unpopular—except when our elected leaders grab funds for our districts. That’s simply bringing home the bacon. But the wasteful funds funneling into those other 434 districts? Unnecessary and unjustifiable. Criminal, in fact. Always has been: the term “eare-marke” originally meant “a cut or mark in the ear of sheep and cattle, serving as a sign of ownership (also a punishment of certain criminals).”
Apparently a segment of the population has always associated earmarks with criminality. Witness the brand-spanking-new congressional Tea Party Caucus, which condemned them as brazenly unconstitutional (and whose members then promptly requested $1 billion worth of them).
So since the jig may soon be up—since Santa may never again scoot down local incinerator chutes to deliver Regional Waste Improvement Initiative grants to mistletoe-sporting workers— the Weekly thought it would take a look at what may be the last-ever earmarks, specifically those requested by our own Congressman Sam Farr. Of which there are 57, totaling around $155 million.
All of which, says Farr’s press secretary David Beltran, are “well-scrutinized—and needed.” Sure enough, in reading Farr’s list, it’s remarkable how down-to-earth and technically focused the requests are. There are no set-asides for a Museum of Surfer Bro’hood or any Celebration of Local Specialness. This is serious stuff.
Many requests, for instance, center on monitoring; there’s more monitoring here than in the girls’ dorm at a co-ed prep school. There’s $39,000 for monitoring Central Coast water quality, $3.5 million for monitoring coastal currents for increased marine safety and $1 million worth of marine bioregion classifying and tracking of movement of ocean life around the Pacific Shelf. And most ambitious of all, a $3 million project to map the entire regional seafloor.
A second set of monitoring programs involves food and food safety. Farr has requested $1 million for a blue fin tuna-tagging program studying why the tuna population is declining so precipitously and where the fish are going. He’s also asked for funds totaling $3.5 million for two programs to enhance food traceability—which would hopefully allow the ag industry to track down individual cases of produce and avoid repeats of the great spinach/e coli disaster that brought local ag to its knees in 2006.
Then there’s the pest-prevention stuff. Farr is seeking $1.35 million for a Pest-Detection Augmentation Program to set thousands of additional insect-snaring traps, which will hopefully amp up early detection and possibly prevent more mass spraying.
And, perhaps most memorably, he’s asked for a Zebra Mussel Eradication Program designed to address the migration of the striped creatures from the Ukraine to coastal California. Back in the Great Lakes, their midway picnic zone, these slimy little menaces took over water pipes, screens and conduits to the point that preserving water flow and commercial fishing would, according to NOAA, eventually take a minimum of $5 billion.
And now it’s happening here, and early intervention is crucial. As Beltran noted, the need to stop zebra mussel fouling of waterways and pipes before it becomes critical is urgent: “If this infestation is not eradicated in the next few years, zebra mussels will likely spread to other reservoirs, waterways, and pipelines in the region. This would be truly catastrophic.” The requested $2.4 million will, hopefully, stop that from occurring.
Farr has also requested many infrastructure-improvement projects, primarily water system and transit enhancements. On the list: $2 million each for widening Highway 156 and fixing the 101/San Juan Road disaster, $1 million to rehabilitate Santa Cruz County rail lines and $5 million to extend Monterey County’s, an $800,000 GPS system for immediately finding buses in trouble and $1 million for purchase of low-pollution buses for the Monterey-Salinas transit district.
Finally, Farr’s list includes $37 million in new or upgraded facilities for educational, agricultural and psychiatric institutions. There’s also an eye-catching $10 million earmark titled “Re-skinning Hangar One At Former NAS Moffett Field,” which also appears in requests from Santa Clara Valley representatives Zoe Lofgren and Mike Honda. Farr’s name on this request simply indicates his support for the project, not moneys for our district. The project would involve stripping away the current metal membrane on the giant blimp-launching (and oft-fantasized ultimate rock show) structure and replacing it with new tougher stuff, for “NASA’s new mission of public-private partnerships to improve research focused on space.” The final frontier.
So which of these will actually pass? Nobody knows. As of this writing, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell had managed to rally his troops and vote down the initial 2011 federal budget proposal containing these requests, because some 1 percent of it is made up of, y’know, earmarks—including $85 million of his own—and that would have been just intolerable.
Stay tuned, and listen carefully. We may or may not hear the sound of a garrulous ho, ho, ho.
