31°

Earmarks are rapidly getting a bad name in presidential politics, but in Alaska and in Juneau, they're seen differently.

"There are some projects that are beyond the means of a local community," said Juneau Mayor Bruce Botelho.

Botelho is among those Alaskans who think earmarks have gotten a bad rap in the ongoing presidential campaign between Republican Sen. John McCain, a longtime opponent of the earmarking process, and Republican Sen. Barack Obama, who once requested earmarks for his home state of Illinois, but lately has come out against them as well.

In the middle has been Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who bragged to the Republican National Convention that she'd killed the nation's most notorious earmark, the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere" in Ketchikan.

"I told Congress 'thanks, but no thanks' on that Bridge to Nowhere," Palin said, and promised to join McCain's fight against pork-barrel spending.

Throughout Alaska, federal earmarks obtained by the state's powerful Congressional delegation have helped communities such as Juneau with projects they couldn't otherwise afford.

"I find it troubling the extent to which earmarks have been pilloried," Botelho said.

In the last year, Juneau asked U.S. Rep. Don Young and other members of the delegation for tens of millions of dollars in earmarks.

Young has been an unabashed defender of using his seniority and power in Congress to bring federal projects back to the state. He has also been accused of seeking earmarks for campaign contributors elsewhere.

After Young pulled ahead in his Republican primary race for re-election, he said the first thing on his agenda was to return to Washington, D.C., and seek the earmarks Alaskans requested.

Among the projects Juneau sought support for is $4.5 million to finish the Environmental Impact Statement for the north Douglas Island crossing bridge.

Some earmarks sought by the city benefit people outside Juneau. A $15,000 requested earmark to replace the Cobb, a decommissioned fisheries research vessel, would keep scientists working at federal facilities at Auke Bay and Lena Point.

Without the Cobb, the scientists lose the research platform they used for studies throughout Southeast and the Gulf of Alaska, Botelho said.

"The loss is twofold, both the loss of the research and the people who work on board," he said.

Juneau's municipally owned Bartlett Regional Hospital is seeking $2.9 million to improve its diagnostic imaging facilities.

The hospital serves patients from elsewhere in the region, and the new equipment will prevent people from having to travel to Seattle or Anchorage for testing, said Ernest Wick, Diagnostic Imaging manager for Bartlett.

Among the earmarks Juneau is seeking is digital mammography equipment, along with a nuclear medicine camera and a slice scanner.

"Digital mammography is considered the state of the art in women's health, and allows us to be at a level of health care that other, larger communities already have," Wick said.

Other local requesters of earmarks include the Tlingit-Haida Central Council, as well as Alaska Electric Light & Power for an intertie to help connect other local communities.

Rep. Beth Kerttula, D-Juneau, said earmarks are a legitimate way to allocate state and federal resources back to local communities, though they can be abused.

"They're important," she said. "They can obviously get out of control, and there needs to be a good process."

Juneau Assembly member Bob Doll said earmarks already have gone out of control, especially for transportation projects.

"The Federal Highway Trust Fund has gotten to the point where half of the fund is diverted to individual projects by individual members of Congress," he said. "I think it has gotten out of hand."

Much of the state's budget this year has been in the form of one-time capital projects for local communities, something that happens when the state is flush with oil money. Kerttula said that is another system of earmarks.

"We've done a lot of great things in the capital budget for everyone from children to seniors," Kerttula said.

She said that at the state level, local legislators know their districts better than do state officials.

Botelho said he does not consider earmarked projects to automatically be "pork" or wasteful government spending, as some national politicians suggest.

"They're pork only if one takes the view that the only permissible screening for federal funds should be in the executive branch, and not in the legislative branch," he said.

There may be some need to change how earmarks are allocated, so that seniority and committee placement does not play as big a role in earmark approval as it now does, Botelho said.

• Contact reporter Pat Forgey at 523-2250 or patrick.forgey@juneauempire.com.