Legislators mixed on pork-barrel projects

RALEIGH - The urge to bring home the bacon continues to prompt North Carolina lawmakers to file special appropriations bills to pay for projects in their home district or county.

While House and Senate members have filed bills that deal with statewide issues, such as helping to ease the burden of Medicaid on county governments, establishing a health insurance pool to cover high-risk patients, banning smoking in many businesses and restaurants, they've also filed bills that would give money collected from taxpayers across the state to local projects.

These projects include:

n $50,000 for the sesquicentennial celebration in Morehead City.

n $3 million to establish a Mountain Island Educational State Forest in Gaston County.

n $150,000 for the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation in Alamance County to provide meeting, office and classroom space for the community.

n $2 million to put sand on the beach at Topsail Beach.

n $500,000 to construct Gateway Gardens in southeast Greensboro.

n $850,000 to the town of Boone for a fire truck.

n $100,000 to the Edgecombe County Sheriff's Department to update computer equipment.

n $600,000 to replace the roof on Gates County High School.

n $5,000 for operating expenses for the Hobgood Citizens Group in Halifax County.

Rep. Debbie Clary, R-Cleveland, said that when she was first elected to the General Assembly back in the 1990s, she thought pork-barrel spending was a bad thing.

"That was a freshman with no knowledge," Clary said.

She doesn't feel that way now. She said she considers being able to take money back to her home district a reward for hard work. She said her constituents have benefited because of her hard work in putting together the state budget when she was a co-chair of the House Appropriations Committee.

"I feel very strongly that my constituents should have benefited from the fact that I sat in the appropriations room and worked that hard," Clary said.

Rep. Cary Allred, R-Alamance, feels different. He said he doesn't file pork-barrel bills.

"I just don't think it's an appropriate use of state taxpayers' money to fund local special projects," Allred said, adding that such projects should be funded by local governments or other contributors, unless the project had a statewide purpose.

He said it would be hypocritical for him to advocate lower taxes while introducing pork-barrel spending bills.

Allred also said he felt that it was an "effort to buy votes with taxpayer money."

Rep. George Cleveland, R-Onslow, said that he generally disagrees with such spending, but does file one pork-barrel bill every year.

"It's for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Jacksonville," Cleveland said. He said he believes the memorial will become an economic stimulant for the area.

John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation, said that even though hundreds of pork-barrel bills are being filed, fewer such projects are making their way into the state budget.

That's a result of bad publicity surrounding special projects a few years ago, when then House Co-Speakers Jim Black, D-Mecklenburg, and Richard Morgan, R-Moore, along with Senate President Pro-tem Marc Basnight, D-Dare, were allowed discretion in how some local projects were paid for.

After that, legislative leader started saying, "If we're going to do these special projects, we'll put then in the budget bill," Hood said.

Then fewer such appropriations made their way into the budget bill, he added.

Ran Coble, executive director of the N.C. Center for Public Policy Research, said that the flurry of pork-spending bills could be a result of increased revenue projections.

"Do we have a little money or don't we have a little money?" Coble said, referring to the mindset of budget leaders in the General Assembly. "This is a 'we got a little money' year."

He said the current approach to pork-barrel budgeting is a far cry from the 1980s when representatives and senators were told they had a specific amount per person to spend on pork-barrel projects and were asked to fill out a form directing where money in their district would be spent.

After that practice was eliminated, items started appearing in the budget, but there was often no way of tracking the sponsor of the pork-barrel sponsor, Coble said.

In recent years, that practice has faded into history too.

Coble said that sometimes it's hard to distinguish between "good pork," which has a statewide purpose, and "bad pork," which has a purely local purpose.

Hood, however, said that pork-barrel spending shouldn't be in the budget at all. Instead, he said, any such money going to local groups or governments should be doled out on a competitive bases by the executive branch of government, not the legislative branch.

Barry Smith can be reached at [ mailto:bsmith@link.freedom.com ]bsmith@link.freedom.com.