House bill gives $2.5 million to help Donald Trump project

Subject: Earmarks and the Henry Hudson Parkway
Date: 3/18/2005 11:56:15 AM Eastern Standard Time
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A slew of news stories this week in the wake of the House approval of the federal transportation bill gave a glimpse of how “earmarks” by individual lawmakers can facilitate or complicate planning. It is hoped that having a Corridor Management Plan for the parkway will insure that transportation funds (whatever their source) fill long-term and community-driven plans for the corridor. Just two examples:

House bill gives $2.5 million to help Donald Trump project

By DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press Writer

March 14, 2005, 2:31 PM EST

WASHINGTON -- Billionaire Donald Trump has fame, fortune, and a hit TV show, but Congress wants to give him a little more: $2.5 million to pave the way for better views from his big West Side towers project.

The $284 billion highway spending bill passed overwhelmingly last week by the House includes a provision for some $2.5 million in road construction that would boost Trump's long-held goal of burying part of the West Side Highway near West 61st St.

Burying that section would add park space and provide better views from Trump Place, a group of towers looking over the Hudson River.

Trump's hope of lowering the West Side Highway has been a political sore point for years, in part because Rep. Jerrold Nadler, in whose district the project lies, opposes the plan to tear down and bury the elevated highway before it wears out.

Nadler, D-Manhattan, openly fought with Rep. Sue Kelly, R-Katonah, in 1998 over a similar $6 million provision for construction at the site. It is unusual for a member of Congress to push for a spending provision outside their own district.

Keith Ashdown, vice-president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a government watchdog group, blasted the funding as pork-barrel spending at its worst.

"There's probably a very short list of individuals who don't deserve to get any federal money, and I would put Donald Trump at the top of that list," said Ashdown, who also complained that no lawmaker has been willing yet to take credit for the spending measure.

"Nobody knows for sure who put this in the bill behind closed doors in the dead of night, so Donald Trump's getting a check for $2.5 million and nobody's even saying who did that."

Neither Nadler's office nor Kelly's office would immediately comment on the $2.5 million provision, and a spokesman for Trump did not immediately return a call for comment.

The $2.5 million would help complete construction of a steel frame underneath Riverside Boulevard around West 61st Street. A steel frame underneath that road would make it easier and cheaper for construction crews to later lower part of the West Side Highway.

Moving the highway, also known as the Joe DiMaggio Highway, below ground would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Senate plans to take up the massive six-year construction spending bill this week.




March 13, 2005
If Federal Transit Bill Is a Smorgasbord, the City Is in Line
By SEWELL CHAN

he federal transportation bill passed by the House of Representatives last week included more than $230 million for an assortment of New York City projects, including a parking garage in Harlem, a waterfront trail in Brooklyn and street repairs in Queens.

At least 70 city projects were inserted into the six-year, $284 billion bill, which would still have to be approved by the Senate and President Bush to become law. The smorgasbord of improvements approved by the House shows the range of transportation needs - both real and perceived - throughout New York City.

The number of projects financed by specific dollar amounts for bridges, roads and related transit projects - as opposed to large-scale general allocations - has exploded since the last two times the federal transportation program was reauthorized, in 1991 and 1998. The bill passed last week included more than 4,000 individual projects, at a cost of more than $12 billion.

Earmarking, as the process is known, is driven by lawmakers, often without consulting the engineers, architects and planners who typically dominate transportation projects.

"It is completely a creature of the legislative process and has grown exponentially over a number of years," said Mortimer L. Downey, who was executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and then the deputy secretary of transportation under President Bill Clinton. Mr. Downey described the process as unwieldy, even irrational.

"I remember bills in the 70's that were thought to be heavy when they had six earmarks in them," he said. "The practice has developed that every member of Congress has some opportunity to put in a project. Some of them aren't even transportation projects."

The New York City projects do seem to bear some relation to transportation. And most were developed with advice from the city, but some primarily involve private groups, including:

¶$6.25 million for the Doe Fund, a nonprofit group, to pay homeless people to remove graffiti along Kings Highway in Brooklyn and elsewhere.

¶$500,000 to rebuild streets, sidewalks and curbs around the newly expanded Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.

¶$150,000 to provide transportation for elderly or disabled people at the Hebrew Home for the Aged in the Bronx.

In some cases, lawmakers inserted projects that do not have a government agency willing to build or operate them. Such projects may never come to fruition.

The most expensive New York City project to receive specific financing last week was $15 million for the purchase of three ferries to provide service between the Rockaway Peninsula and Lower Manhattan.

"This has been a near-obsession for me," the project's sponsor, Representative Anthony D. Weiner, said in an interview, adding that a ferry system could reduce by half the commuting time for thousands of Queens residents.

Mr. Weiner said he would like the transportation authority to buy and operate the ferries. But the authority, a state entity, does not operate any ferries and has no plans to start.

The congressman, who represents parts of Brooklyn and Queens, said he hoped the authority would change its mind. "I've spoken to the M.T.A. about putting fare boxes on these babies and making it part of the integrated transit service in the city," he said.

Similarly, Representative José E. Serrano, a Democrat, designated $3 million to upgrade Metro-North Railroad stations in the Bronx and plan for a new rail station at Yankee Stadium, while Representative Vito J. Fossella, a Republican, designated $2 million to rehabilitate the 86th Street subway station in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. The transportation authority does not consider either project to be pressing.

Christopher P. Boylan, the authority's top lobbyist, declined to criticize any specific project and emphasized that he appreciated the help of New York's representatives. But he added that they do not always consult with experts before setting aside money for pet initiatives.

"We will look at every earmark to see if there's a way we can work with it," Mr. Boylan said. "There may be some that just don't fit. People come to us with projects all the time, thinking they are the most important projects."

Mr. Boylan is no stranger to asking for government help; the authority wants $10 billion from Albany and Washington to build the first segment of the Second Avenue subway and a link between the Long Island Rail Road and Grand Central Terminal.

The federal contribution to those projects involves a rigorous assessment of their effectiveness and environmental impact, and can entail hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. By contrast, the individual House projects for New York City range from $150,000 to $15 million, and do not require the same sort of scrutiny.

City officials said the earmarking this time was far more rational than in 1991 or 1998. In 2003, shortly before the expiration of the 1998 transportation act, officials began meeting to coordinate and prioritize their requests.

"In the past, the members would put in projects not having discussed them with the city, projects that were not our priority, projects that made no sense," said the city's transportation commissioner, Iris Weinshall, whose department oversaw the effort.

"This time," she said, "we visited every member of the delegation and went over our priorities, their priorities, and tried to figure out how to mesh what they wanted to do with what we wanted to do."

In the end, at least 42 of the 70 or so projects were developed with guidance from the city's transportation, parks, planning or economic development agencies.

Ms. Weinshall said she was particularly pleased by the designation of $14 million for improvements to the 125th Street commercial corridor in Harlem, $5.5 million to improve pedestrian safety in Times Square and $4.6 million to reduce traffic hazards around 135 schools throughout the city.

The projects are only a tiny fraction of the spending that maintains and builds the local road, bridge and transit network. To planners, it remains one of the odder aspects of transportation policy.

"The earmarking process is not very rigorous," said Gerry Bogacz, the planning director at the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, a government-sponsored body that tries to predict the region's transportation needs over the next several decades. "You're just putting a number down and a brief description of what it's for. You're going through the process backwards, effectively - starting with the project and then going through all the different steps."