No More Earmarks = Tough Love

There's a reasonably even-handed op-ed piece in today's Daily News regarding the end of the earmark. Underdeveloped Alaska (and make no mistake, much of this place is still more akin to a third-world country than to a modern U.S. State) has benefited greatly from earmarks for specific infrastructure projects.

For Alaskans, the recent ban on federal earmarks brings to an end a decades-long era in which the state has routinely, and heavily, relied upon those funds for basics like roads or sewer systems.

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U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, announced the ban Tuesday. For years, Inouye worked closely with Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens to ensure the needs of the nation's two youngest states were looked out for; both men were unabashed supporters of earmarks as a way to meet their states' needs. Stevens, who died in August, is revered in his home state for having brought home billions of dollars in projects and aid during his 40 years in the Senate -- a legacy Alaska's current congressional delegation has sought to keep alive.

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The ban won't end federal spending in the states. Estimates put earmarks at less than 1 percent of the total federal budget, and Alaska, for example, gets far more from formula-based programs for things like transportation than it does from earmarks.

But it will put added pressure on other funding sources, like competitive grants. And it could leave some communities in a lurch.

Alaska and Hawaii are still young, developing states. While Alaska's infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," which would have bridged Ketchikan and its airport on nearby Gravina Island, became an object of ridicule and an example, for critics, of a broken system, earmarks have helped build the state's infrastructure.

Even today, many communities aren't connected to road systems; hundreds of miles of the Dalton Highway, leading to Alaska's prodigious Prudhoe Bay oil fields, are dirt; and basics -- like water and sewer systems -- are lacking in some remote areas.

To catch a flight from Ketchikan, one must take a ferry to the airport. Kathie Wasserman, executive director of the Alaska Municipal League, said small villages and towns are often unable to get the money on their own -- through taxation or bond issues, for example -- to cover infrastructure projects.

Read the rest at the link, above.