McGovern Won’t Give Up Transportation Funding for Katrina
WASHINGTON, Oct. 5-Plans have been in the works for years to renovate an old wire factory in Quinsigamond Village and open it as Worcester’s Blackstone Valley Visitors Center. The center would be a tribute to Worcester’s role in the industrial revolution and would fix up an old building that is considered by many to be an eyesore. The Worcester Historical Museum may move into the new facility, and the area would include new restaurants, bike trails and green spaces.
But funding for the center, and for hundreds of projects like it throughout the country, has become more controversial since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit. That is because the project depends on $6.4 million in “earmarked” funds added to this year’s federal transportation bill.
The bulk of the $286.5 billion in the transportation bill is distributed to states according to a preset formula. “Earmarks” are extra funds added to the bill for a lawmaker’s specific local projects.
A handful of U.S. representatives, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), have indicated they will return all or part of their earmarks to help offset the cost of hurricane reconstruction.
Citizens Against Government Waste, a fiscally conservative watchdog group, is lobbying members of Congress to sign its “No Pork Pledge” to sacrifice their share of what the group estimates is $24 billion in transportation earmarks so that the money can be used to defray the costs of the Gulf Coast clean-up effort.
“What was wasteful before Katrina is still wasteful now, but the contrast is more obvious,” Tom Schatz, the group’s president, said in an interview. He said highway bill earmarks that pay for projects other than roads, like flowers and streetscapes and visitors centers, are proof that highway funding is “out of control” with pork.
Mr. Schatz criticized President Bush for not setting a firmer cap on spending in appropriations bills and said his group supported a package that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn) is working on that would rescind all earmarked funds that had not yet been spent.
U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Worcester) earmarked the money for the Blackstone Valley Visitor’s Center, and he isn’t willing to give it up.
“If I didn’t earmark this money, these projects wouldn’t happen,” he said. Rep. McGovern said that discretionary funds tend to go only to big cities. In Massachusetts, he said, most of the federal transportation funds the state receives goes to the Big Dig in Boston, while roads and bridges in Worcester and elsewhere go without repairs.
The Blackstone Valley project will bring well-paying jobs in construction and visitors to Worcester, he said.
Rep. McGovern advocates repealing the Bush tax cut for the wealthiest one percent of taxpayers, which, he said, would generate an additional $327 billion to offset the cost of hurricane relief, making it unnecessary to cut other funds. Mr. Schatz said there was no need to raise revenues, because there were so many opportunities to cut spending.
State Rep. John P. Fresolo (D-Worcester) said he had been working on the Blackstone Valley Visitor Center project for eight years and now has a verbal commitment from the statehouse leadership that the state’s share of the cost-$1.6 million-will come through this year.
The center would be a “major accomplishment,” Fresolo said, and that while it will have only a small staff, it will generate “countless” jobs in the area. He said the state has invested $300 million in Route 146, and it would be senseless to have it just connect to Route 290 without allowing tourists to turn off for the new visitor’s center..
“Hopefully this will provide the economic shot in the arm the area needs,” Fresolo said.
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