The Freshman Part II: NYT Profiles Gillibrand

by: phillip anderson

Thu Mar 22, 2007 at 11:13:31 AM EDT

The New York Times continues its series about freshman Rep Kirsten Gillibrand with it's second installment, "Earmarked For Success?". This installment follows Kirsten through her first foray into the newly overhauled "earmark" process. It's a great read. Here are some highlights:

...Huddled around a coffee table with her senior staff members inside her office on Capitol Hill, Representative Gillibrand has been poring over scores of requests from elected officials and community leaders, Democrats and Republicans alike, who are turning to her for money as Congress begins hammering out the federal budget.

It is the bricks and mortar of legislative life, and, as Ms. Gillibrand has come to learn, the requests for federal aid range from the major (like $7 million to build a new police station in Saratoga Springs) to things that are obscure even to her (like $400,000 to renovate the James Vanderpoel House in Kinderhook).

...

Her choices were not always clear-cut. For example, should she try to obtain financial help for the Opera House in Hudson, or for the Volunteer Fire Department in Clifton Park?

The lobbying was often intensely personal. A longtime acquaintance of the congresswoman, who runs a foundation called the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, was among the legions of people who dropped by seeking support. And the process seemed to be fraught with enough political peril to keep her up at night.

"I came up with that idea at literally 3 in the morning when I couldn't sleep," she said to her staff at a recent meeting, after proposing a novel way to get $6.8 million in funding for renovations at the Olympic center in Lake Placid. "It made sense at 3 in the morning."

At the heart of Ms. Gillibrand's deliberations over earmarks is a paradox. She rode into Congress, against great odds, partly on a wave of voter revulsion with Washington ethics. Democrats did their best to stoke that revulsion, campaigning against "special-interest earmarks," which they said Republicans would secretly insert into spending bills at the behest of allies and contributors.

Ms. Gillibrand, a lawyer, argued that the secrecy of the earmarking process had contributed to the scandals that engulfed the Hill. Now she asserts that earmarks, when dispensed fairly and openly, are an important way of addressing local needs. And under new rules imposed by a new Democratic majority, she is required to attach her name to the pet projects she sponsors and to certify that she has no financial interest in the projects.

More on the flip...

To critics of the earmarks process, it is not enough. Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said that Ms. Gillibrand's efforts at transparency, while laudable, barely scratched the surface of the problem, because lawmakers can still submit funding requests based on personal and political calculations.

"The way the process works is that Congress awards winners of taxpayer dollars on the basis of political muscle rather than a project's merit," he said.

And he's right. Even with the recent reforms to the process, reforms that were badly needed, the "earmark" dance is still very much a series of purely political calculations. My biggest problem with "earmarks, much like "member items" here at the state level, is the lack of any discernible standards or criteria for what gets funded. I've written many grants over the years. Those grants have to meet certain benchmarks for eligibility and they have to demonstrate how they will benefit this group or objective. Pork is pork is pork and the final approval of such projects is almost always a political calculation.

The last few weeks have been telling. As Ms. Gillibrand and her staff sat inside her office debating projects, a parade of supplicants - many representing politically potent constituent groups and institutions - appeared at her door in the Cannon House Office Building, mindful that the deadline for lawmakers to submit earmark proposals to House leaders was fast approaching.

...Each decision involved opportunity and risk. For instance, the congresswoman crossed off a nearly $8 million proposal to construct a museum in Fort Edward that would showcase remnants of an 18th-century British fort and Indian artifacts. The remnants and artifacts would be unearthed during an environmental cleanup project in the town that involves the dredging of tons of PCB-contaminated sediment from the banks and bed of the Hudson River.

Local officials, including an outspoken and politically influential town supervisor, have said the museum would give a boost to the economically beleaguered town, and its rejection was not expected to engender good feelings.

"We're going to take some lumps," acknowledged Mike Russo, the congresswoman's district director.

Underscoring the political pressures involved, Ms. Gillibrand and her staff said that they would work on finding federal grants for the museum and other projects that do not get earmark appropriations.

...

Inevitably there will be losers, and there is always the danger that some of those groups will become political enemies. But Ms. Gillibrand has managed to use the earmarking process to win over Republicans as well. David G. Kruczlnicki, a Republican and the president of the hospital in Glens Falls, was among the people her office reached out to after the flap erupted involving promises her predecessor made.

While Mr. Kruczlnicki's hospital did not receive the $400,000 that Mr. Sweeney had pledged for new radiation equipment, Ms. Gillibrand's office is planning to request $3 million for the hospital to construct a new building for a primary health clinic it now runs in a rural part of the district.

This has been a great series so far and I commend Gillibrand for giving the Times this type of access. It's been quite enlightening so far.