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Turner bucks regional trend on earmarks

His fellow area Republicans are loath to ask for federal funds for area projects.

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By Jessica Wehrman, Staff Writer Updated 1:05 AM Sunday, April 26, 2009

Up through February, the earmark requests rolled to U.S. Rep. Steve Austria’s office. Twenty-one from the Dayton Development Coalition. Eleven from Wright State University. A handful from the city of Springfield.

Something else happened about that time too: Austria, R-Beavercreek, began voting.

He voted no on an economic stimulus bill that spent $787 billion dollars.

He voted no on President Obama’s budget, which Austria feared would mean even more debt.

He voted no on a supplemental appropriations bill that included earmarks secured by his predecessor, U.S. Rep. David Hobson.

And when the April deadline came to submit earmark requests, Austria essentially voted no again, submitting nothing. In an interview, he said he couldn’t bring himself to request earmarks in the current economic crisis. The level of spending, he said, had him worried.

In a political environment where citizens hold tea parties to protest government bailouts and high spending, the much-scrutinized earmark is again under the magnifying glass. The House Appropriations Committee this year — for the first time — required House members to post earmark requests on their constituent Web sites, and a recent supplemental appropriations bill was lambasted for its high levels of so-called pork.

Critics say earmarks are a too-easy way of rewarding political cronies, not to mention blowing up an already-ballooning federal deficit.

But there are plenty of others — including members of Congress on both sides of the aisle — who defend earmarks, saying they are a lifeline to much-needed projects. Besides, they say, the pot of money that makes up members’ earmarks will be spent, regardless of whether one House member wants earmarks or not.

“The reality is, if it’s not spent in this district it gets spent in someone else’s,” said U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville.

The Miami Valley, which is represented entirely by Republicans, has two congressmen — Austria and Rep. John Boehner, R-West Chester — who didn’t request a single earmark. But it also has Turner, who requested 48 totaling about $147 million.

Turner has conservative credentials. He voted against the stimulus bill and last year’s bank rescue plan.

Turner said many of the earmarks he’s secured provide “seed money” for important projects that would otherwise never become reality.

“Federal money doesn’t pay for all of a project,” he said. “Everyone else’s money has to come to the table too.”

According to Turner, the $50 million in earmarks he’s garnered over the past few years have resulted in $150 million more in spending from sources including local and state governments.

Recently, Turner nabbed a $1 million earmark to rebuild Hillsboro’s wastewater treatment plant.

The EPA had ordered the city to do so, but the city couldn’t pony up the money. Without that earmark, he said, the city would’ve had to raise rates. “It would’ve come out of the pocket of every family in Hillsboro,” he said.

This year, Turner has asked for a broad range of money, including $670,000 to extend utilities along the Airport Access Road in Vandalia; $1 million to help redevelop the former Mound Department of Energy site in Miamisburg; $50,000 to buy new equipment for the Wilmington Police Department.

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, a fiscal conservative who has regularly introduced bills aimed at holding the line on federal spending, sets a high bar for his earmark requests.

He administers a simple test: Could they look a family from Montana in the eye and argue on behalf of their earmarks? Do the earmarks serve a valid federal purpose?

Jordan requested just three earmarks this year: one for an Air National Guard base in Mansfield, one for the so-called Lima Tank Plant and a third for flood control studies in Findlay, which has suffered three devastating floods in the last 13 months.

Similarly, U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Loveland, asked for two earmarks: one funded engineering studies for a congested area around Interstate 275 and Ohio 32, and the other dealt with riverfront development in downtown Cincinnati.

Austria hasn’t ruled out asking for earmarks in the future but this year argued it was philosophically inconsistent with what is happening in the economy.

If he’s voting against big spending bills and bailouts, he said, it doesn’t make much sense for him to hold out his hand for federal dollars on local projects.

Austria said he still plans to support Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. And he said he’ll fight for his district for competitive grants and other dollars that can be secured outside the earmark process.

“There are a lot of different ways to help the region,” he said.

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