‘You want my money, my money!’

For the benefit of motorists down in Florida’s Lee and Collier counties, a modest $10 million for “widening and improvements” to Interstate 75 was included in the 2005 federal highway bill.

Remarkably enough, such a federal expenditure is actually authorized by the Constitution, providing a mail truck uses the highway from time to time.

But a funny thing happened to that authorization before it landed on President Bush’s desk for his signature. It got changed. Someone snuck in and changed the $10 million allocation so it would go for “Coconut Road Interchange/I-75.”

With 6,500 special interest earmarks being larded into the $24 billion, 2005 highway bill till it looked like it had been subjected to an afternoon of blindfolded dart-throwing by a gang of 535 miscreants, it’s no wonder nobody noticed.

Eventually, the federal highway folks got around to forwarding the $10 million to officials in Florida, at which point someone thought to ask how their highway priority got changed to this Coconut Road interchange, which no one there really wanted.

That project had a much lower priority, you see. It had been criticized by environmental groups for its close proximity to wetlands. Which darned Florida congressmen had gotten it wrong, officials in Lee and Collier counties wanted to know.

No Florida congressman. It turned out Florida developer Michael Aranoff, who owns property along Coconut Road, stood to benefit from improvements to that interchange. And Mr. Aranoff had helped then-House Transportation Committee Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, raise $40,000 for his re-election campaign.

So the Florida earmark got slipped in by the powerful congressman from Alaska.

And not just any congressman from Alaska. It was Rep. Young who gained infamy for recently proposing Alaska’s $200 million “Bridge to Nowhere,” and who “had a meltdown on the House floor when one of his earmarks was challenged,” note the folks at Citizens Against Government Waste, “screaming, ‘You want my money, my money!’

“Rep. Young is also being investigated,” CAGW notes, “along with other Alaska politicians, for his ties to an oil company executive who has pleaded guilty to charges of bribing state lawmakers.”

So embarrassed were the residents of Collier and Lee counties by the way this “tainted” money had come to them that the Lee County Metropolitan Planning Organization on Aug. 17 did a very unusual thing. They voted 10-3 to return the money to the federal government and ask that the money instead be spent for its original purpose, the widening of Interstate 75.

“This is a symbolic victory over wasteful spending,” declares CAGW President Tom Schatz, while acknowledging the planning group vote may not be legally binding. “This situation is a textbook example of what is wrong with earmarks. They are often unwarranted and unwanted expenditures that circumvent normal budgetary procedures, override the priorities of local authorities and reward special interests while corrupting their sponsors. … Congratulations to Lee County for not wanting to be associated with Rep. Young and for standing up against the powerful pork machine.”

Amen.