Senate Bill -- Meant for Katrina and Iraq -- Allots Funds to Various Other Projects
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post
May 24, 2006
BILOXI, Miss. -- This city's east side remains largely abandoned, a bleak panorama of empty lots and abandoned homes left behind by the tradesmen, shrimpers and casino workers who once lived here.
Hundreds had little or no insurance. For people such as 83-year-old Elzora Brown, a retired dry-cleaning presser whose little frame house was waterlogged up to the eaves, there's not enough federal disaster aid for repairs. "Whatever the Lord sees fit, that's what I'll have," she said.
Just down the coast in Pascagoula, defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. similarly didn't have enough insurance to cover hurricane losses at its shipyards. But the company isn't awaiting divine intervention.
It has an ally in the U.S. Senate and is slated to receive $140 million for rebuilding.
"The losses it incurred . . . could adversely impact those jobs, add to the cost of the high-tech destroyers and cruisers the shipyard is building for the Navy, and affect our national security," said Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.). Northrop's money is tucked into the $109 billion spending bill intended for Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war. It is an earmark, one of those narrowly focused appropriations that members of Congress arrange for their constituents or favored recipients.
In recent years, Congress has been on a spending binge worth tens of billions of dollars, and there has been talk on Capitol Hill of reining in earmarks. But the Senate version of the bill includes billions in such spending, covering an array of far-flung causes: New England shellfishermen affected by red tide, a program to fight an insect ravaging pine trees in the Rockies, and a road in Hawaii.
Critics have pointed to the bill as a monumental example of earmarking taken to extremes, with many noting that while the bill was supposed to address "emergency" spending for the war and Katrina relief, many of the outlays have little to do with an emergency, the war or the hurricane.
Usually the critics attack earmarks as wasteful, but the experience in Mississippi reveals another problem, according to some local officials here. No one doubts that the state needs recovery money. The question is whether some of the earmarks for Gulf Coast projects such as Northrop's are coming at the expense of the urgent needs reflected in the abandoned streets.
Among the projects in the Senate version of the bill are $38 million to repair historic Mississippi properties such as Jefferson Davis's home overlooking the beach in Biloxi; $176 million to build a military retirement home in Gulfport; and the biggest project, $700 million to buy an 80-mile stretch of railroad over which a new highway would be built. That project, which has become known as the "railroad to nowhere," was inserted into the bill by Lott and Mississippi's other senator, Thad Cochran (R), chairman of the Appropriations Committee. It would reroute a train line damaged by Katrina -- and already rebuilt at a cost of at least $250 million.
Those projects would help jump-start the area's economic engines, say advocates, and the new highway over the railroad tracks would also improve hurricane safety because it would move east-west traffic away from an existing thoroughfare that hugs the coast.
But many local officials say those expensive projects may be pushing aside more-immediate demands from people still struggling to rebuild their lives.
"What they're saying to Northrop Grumman is 'Here -- here's $140 million. Go get yourself back together,' " said Bill Stallworth, a Biloxi City Council member running a relief center out of a church building here. "What we're saying is 'Look, people, we need more money to get people back in their homes. We need housing. Volunteers can't do it all.' " He said that if the volunteer building crews he uses could just hire a handful of licensed plumbers and electricians, they could increase the number of homes being rebuilt in the area from 10 a month to 100. But there isn't enough money.
The federally funded housing program offers money only to about half of the approximately 42,000 homeowners who suffered damage: those who owned property outside the designated "flood zone" and those who had a homeowners insurance policy but lacked flood insurance.
The state recently began accepting applications for that program. But even for that limited group, the relief often falls short of what is required to rebuild, because homeowners can receive no more than the limit of their homeowners insurance policy and many, such as Brown, were underinsured.
Eddie Favre is mayor of nearby Bay St. Louis, a small city that bore some of the worst of the storm surge. He said he found it difficult to support the purchase of the CSX rail line because of the more pressing demands he faces.
The city's property tax base has dropped from $87 million to $27 million because of the destruction, he said, and the city is in dire financial straits.
The railroad purchase "may be a great project, but to me there's a lot more pressing needs that the $700 million could cover," he said. "I don't know how I'm going to pay our police. I don't know how we're going to pay our teachers. I don't even know if there is going to be a city anymore."
Cochran defended the railroad project, saying it is important to economically jump-start the region.
"I understand many needs remain in the Gulf Coast region and there is still much that needs to be rebuilt," he said. "We need to make sure there will be industry and jobs for the people who are attempting to rebuild their lives, and we need to make sure we are prepared for future storms by rebuilding in a way that mitigates future damage."
Earmarks avoid more rigorous review and add billions of dollars to the cost of the legislation. Assistance for farmers around the country added at least $4 billion. But by spreading the wealth, legislators please constituents nationwide and build support for its passage.
But the towering forests that climb the slopes of the snow-capped Rockies just west of Lake Dillon, Colo., are a long way from Katrina's path and from Baghdad. The bill includes $30 million to deal with a hungry insect called the bark beetle that is eating its way through the state's pine trees.
The insect-control funds were added on the Senate floor, with no debate and no committee consideration, after Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) warned that "extended drought and insect infestations have created dangerous conditions for catastrophic fires in 2006."
At least one of the projects has been rejected twice before but has won preliminary approval as an earmark: money to alleviate the red-tide losses borne by New England's shellfishermen.
Last summer, senators from the region asked colleagues to include $15 million in the Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill to help. That didn't work. They also requested that the Office of Management and Budget include money for shellfishermen in the next federal budget but were turned down.
They have had more success in the current bill. The Senate approved a measure that provides $20 million to "assist shellfishermen" in New England affected by a red tide outbreak last year.
Melissa Wagoner, a spokeswoman for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), defended the decision to include the money in an emergency appropriations bill.
"It's an emergency for our fishermen and their families," she said, adding that "you look for a vehicle" to get the measure passed.
In Biloxi, Brown said she may receive as much as $40,000 in aid. But her house took on water up to the eaves, and the cost of repairs probably will far exceed that. Last week, her son was on her front porch, trying to make repairs.
"You hear about billions of dollars coming from Washington," said Robert Brown, 58, a garbage truck driver. "But where is it?"
Staff writers David A. Fahrenthold in Boston, T.R. Reid in Denver and Catharine Skipp in Miami contributed to this report.
