We all love to hate earmarks.
Those funds allocated in the federal budget by individual legislators for special projects or purposes in their districts are a waste of taxpayer money, right?
Some of the more infamous examples of egregious earmarks over the years include funding for a teapot museum in western North Carolina and an indoor rain forest in Iowa.
These projects, most of us think, are a waste of taxpayer money and contribute to the federal deficit that is spiraling out of control.
The regular grumbling about ?pork barrel? projects rose to a crescendo with the advent of the Tea Party and during the 2010 elections, when Republicans, many of them from the Tea Party, seized control of the U.S. House of Representatives and many state legislatures.
In 2010, Congress passed a moratorium on earmarks. They were no longer allowed in the federal budget.
Some members of both parties at the time didn?t think a blanket ban on earmarks was such a great idea, and more are starting to agree with them. In fact, there is a movement afoot in the current Congress to take another look at earmarks.
Maybe allowing individual legislators to allocate money for projects in their districts instead of leaving it to the discretion of a federal agency or official isn?t such a bad idea after all.
When earmarks went away, with the ?pork? projects that benefitted a very few also went funds for projects that affect the core economies and health and public safety of folks in many communities.
And you couldn?t find a better example of that than the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project to dredge important navigable waterways and keep them open for commerce.
Right now, the folks on Ocracoke Island are suffering yet another economic blow, not to mention a threat to public safety.
The Hatteras-Ocracoke ferry, the only free ferry and the shortest route off and on the island for residents and visitors, hasn?t been running regularly for almost a week ? and hasn?t been running at all for the last few days.
Ocracokers are outraged, as they should be, that there are no funds for something as important as keeping Rollinson Channel in Hatteras Inlet open for the ferries.
And the inlet shoaling problem is spilling over to Hatteras Island, where recreational, charter, and commercial fishermen are having trouble getting their boats in and out of the inlet safely. In addition, a major offshore fishing tournament that brings much needed dollars to the community in this shoulder season is having to be adjusted, so that the many ? or even most ? of the boats fishing in the tournament will not have to come to Hatteras village and their owners and customers will not pay for dockage, buy fuel, rent houses or motel rooms, or eat out in the village.
One Ocracoke reader wrote to us about the current ferry situation, noting that the need for dredging has been apparent for months and asking where have the funds been.
?I don’t have an answer,? he wrote, ?but I do have two questions- how have we allowed the situation to deteriorate to this extent, and how many more economic insults, coming one right after the other, can we endure??
Other Ocracokers are just as frustrated with the lack of funding for dredging and the delays and problems with getting it done in recent years.
They can blame the current earmark situation.
Earmarks aren?t good ? at least until they are funding projects in your community that are vital and important to your survival.
Joshua Bowlen, legislative aide to U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., has been dealing for years with the Corps and dredging projects and with the good, the bad, and the ugly of earmarks.
The current problems, he says, go back more than a decade ? to the end of the Clinton administration and continued through the Bush administration and now the Obama administration. In other words, this is a nonpartisan problem that both parties have contributed to.
What started to happen back then is that folks started to be more concerned about federal spending and the deficit.
The executive branch responded by including cuts in the annual budgets they sent to Congress.
One place they liked to cut was in the Corps of Engineers operations and maintenance budget, especially the budget for shallow-draft projects, such as Hatteras Inlet.
The administration could cut the Corps budget and appear to be fiscally responsible. On the other hand, administration officials knew that Congress would restore the needed funds for dredging with earmarks.
So, that was the game for the better part of a decade ? with more drastic cuts as time went by.
However, that game ended with the moratorium on earmarks, but the executive branch didn?t ask for more funds to make up the difference.
So, the short answer is that the end of earmarks was the beginning of much more serious problems for communities that relied on the Corps of Engineers maintenance projects.
?Congress neutered itself in the ability to fund projects that the executive branch doesn?t ask for,? says Bowlen, even though the U.S. Constitution gives Congress ?the power of the purse.?
?Congressman Jones? hands are tied,? Bowlen said.
Jones did manage to get $2 million for funding Rollinson Channel in Hatteras Inlet and more for Oregon Inlet in the Disaster Relief and Recovery Act that was passed earlier this year.
But earmarks to keep the funding for dredging in the annual federal budget just isn?t going to happen now.
Bowlen said Jones believes that earmarks were abused.
In many cases, earmarks were not vetted to determine if they benefitted the public and the taxpayer but were just put in the budget by legislators as requested by powerful lobbyists. And the members of the House Appropriations Committee often got the lion?s share of the earmarks for their districts.
It was a problem, Bowlen said, giving the powerful the access to the most money.
However, there were other earmarks that did serve a greater public good, he said, such as the Corps projects.
Those projects, he said, were seriously considered and vetted in a lengthy process that included considering such issues as the cost and benefit ratio of the project.
I am willing to admit that, perhaps naively, I never connected the struggle to keep our channels open for our public safety and economic well-being to those really nasty earmarks.
Congress may be taking another look at earmarks and a look at other ways to vet them and keep them from being the exclusive tool of the most powerful.
And I would think that many of us on the islands, on the Outer Banks, and in all of coastal North Carolina might be willing to make an attitude adjustment also.
Bowlen also said that in the absence of funding in the federal budget, many state and local officials are turning to ?memoranda of understanding,? an arrangement in which the Army Corps of Engineers does the dredging work but it is funded by the state or a locality.
Of course, as Congress continues its gridlock, unable to pass even the simplest funding bills, the pressure on the state and local governments is increasing also.
The sidecaster dredge Merritt is due in Hatteras Inlet later today to make another temporary fix to the channel.
And it should be noted that it?s not the first attempt to dredge since the hurricane. Dredging was done last fall after the storm, and, as a matter of fact, the Merritt was back over the winter and just left in mid-March.
However, the sand just keeps washing back into the channel and making getting in and out of the inlet difficult, if not impossible, for not only ferries but also charter boats, private boats, and commercial fishermen.
And a larger project with a pipeline dredge to move the sand probably won?t happen until at least September.
