NC Senate Introduces More Than $500 million in Earmarks in 2008

In recent years, much attention and scrutiny has been placed on the use of “earmarks” in the Federal budget. The federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) describes an earmark as “funds provided by the Congress for projects or programs where the congressional direction (in bill or report language) circumvents the merit-based or competitive allocation process, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the Executive Branch to properly manage funds.”

In North Carolina, with a much smaller budget, specific earmarking of projects in the budget is not as widespread, but still prevalent.  For example, the Civitas Institute last year identified $205.4 million in “pork barrel” spending in the FY2007-2008 North Carolina budget.  North Carolina, however, does not have the same earmarking system as the Federal government.  Here, members file individual bills as placeholders or requests to denote their specific earmark.  However, not all earmarks in the final budget come from filed bills – some are directly inserted by legislative leaders behind closed doors and without public scrutiny until the final version of the budget is made available and is unable to be changed or amended.

During the current “short” session of the General Assembly, more than half a billion dollars worth of earmark spending has been requested by the North Carolina Senate as identified by The Civitas Institute. The total for the two year budget cycle comes to roughly $1.3 billion in Senate earmark requests.  Click here for the list of each earmark bill introduced by Senator.   Click here for the complete list of earmarking bills introduced in the NC Senate in 2007 and 2008.

Top five dollar Senators in terms of earmark requests over the last 2 years:

Clark Jenkins (D-Edgecombe) $205,174,336
Daniel Clodfelter (D-Mecklenburg) $100,290,237
Walter Dalton (D-Rutherford) $92,250,000
Katie Dorsett (D- Guilford) $80,927,901
Charles Atwater (D-Chatham) $75,344,131

Some of the most outrageous/controversial items:

S270   Construct a “walking trail and a changing room” in the city of Northwest – estimated population of 671. (Soles) – $90,000
S1103 “Construct oyster hatcheries at each of the three North Carolina aquariums.” (Boseman) – $16,300,000
S1355 “Western NC Museum of History,” to be located in Buncombe Co. (Nesbitt) – $20,000,000
S1904 John Coltraine Music Hall (Dorsett) – $500,000
S1965 Stem cell research at 4 universities (Dalton) – $16,000,000
S1990 and S2061 300th anniversary celebrations for town of Beaufort and New Bern (Preston) – $600,000
S2049 Funds for a Mobile Barbershop (Dannelly) – $100,000

The methodology used to identify earmark legislation in this report is based on the above OMB description.   A legislator is credited with requesting the earmark if they are one of the primary sponsors of the legislation.

Funding for university and community college capital projects were included because those decisions should be made based on consultation with the Boards of Governors, not by the respective power of certain legislators.  Also included were monies earmarked for specific nonprofit agencies.  While the vast majority of these nonprofits are worthy organizations, earmarking funds to specific nonprofits bypasses the normal grant system, which better evaluates program worth, and opens the door for possible corruption and conflicts of interest.