By Phil Lewis, Naples Daily News, May 6, 2008
6 May 2008 // We suppose we should be happy now that Congress has voted to have the Justice Department investigate a 3-year-old, $10 million earmark for an interchange at Interstate 75 and Coconut Road in Estero.
The Daily News has been trying to connect all the dots since the summer of 2005. (Sure, The New York Times is being credited by the national media for breaking the story, but at least The Times has given the Daily News credit for being the first to put two and two together and ask hard questions about possible fraud, forgery and special favors.) This Justice Department investigation, approved Wednesday in the House by an overwhelming 358-51 vote, should be just what is needed, right? Maybe not, but more on that later.
First, it’s important to add some perspective to the history of this controversy.
You have to think back to February 2005, when rookie U.S. Rep. Connie Mack IV invited U.S. Rep. Don Young, a power-hitting congressional veteran, to Estero and Florida Gulf Coast University to talk about roads and raise a little campaign money.
The previous fall, Mack ran for Porter Goss’ vacant Southwest Florida congressional seat with strong promises to finally do something about traffic-clogged Interstate 75 between Fort Myers and Naples. During the Goss years, an interstate-widening program got some lip service but no action.
Mack was determined to get something done and Young, the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee at the time, was the guy to do it. He held sway over a pending $286.4 billion federal highway bill.
Mack brought Young down to meet with business and community leaders and hear — and see — how badly money was needed to widen I-75. Approximately $40,000 was raised for Young’s re-election campaign at the same time.
Not much happened until that summer, when both houses of Congress approved the massive bill that provided money for highways, bridges, hiking trails and bike paths in all 50 states.
From our perch in the newsroom that summer, prospects didn’t look good for the long-needed widening. U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez had just told the Daily News that a hoped-for $70 million for I-75 was a pipe dream. The $70 million was the amount being pushed by Mack and another rookie congressman representing Southwest Florida, U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart.
The senator said he favored the $70 million figure, but competition for federal highway dollars was stiff. Southwest Florida residents have to be realistic, Martinez said, predicting that we would be lucky to get $50 million, about half of what would be needed.
That’s why we were shocked at the end of July when the $286.4 billion spending plan — approved and sent to President Bush for his signature — showed not $50 million, not $70 million, but $81.1 million for I-75 widening in Southwest Florida.
Everyone applauded. Mack and Diaz-Balart took well-deserved bows. After years of inaction, two rookie congressmen managed to bring home the bacon.
But, another surprise came a week later. There wasn’t $81.1 million in the spending plan for I-75; there was $91.1 million.
Wow, another $10 million. Here’s how we reported the revelation on Aug. 11, 2005:
“The funding was added ’very late’ in a separate section as part of the larger $286.4 billion highway and mass transit bill that was approved by the U.S. House and Senate last month, the Southwest Florida lawmakers (Mack and Diaz-Balart) said, but until this week they did not know it existed.” Mack, who was quick to take credit for the first $81.1 million, was happy about the extra $10 million, but he appeared to be as surprised as we were. He didn’t take credit.
A short while later, we reported that the extra $10 million was under the title “I-75 widening,” but it was specifically earmarked for an interchange at Coconut Road, a project that was not being requested by road planners nor Lee County’s Metropolitan Planning Organization, which oversees highway needs.
Then, things started to unravel. A brave MPO member found that wording of the earmark truly was added very late. In fact, someone penciled it in after Congress had passed the bill, but before the president had signed it. Meanwhile, our reporters did some digging and found that among the donors to Rep. Young’s campaign the previous winter were a few developers who had lots to gain if an interchange is ever built at Coconut Road.
The New York Times picked up our story and Capitol Hill watchdogs started howling.
It came to a head this past week on the House floor. Young claimed that the $10 million was not a favor to campaign donors. He said it was for a project that Mack pushed and the community supported. He said the penciled-in change to the bill specifically earmarking $10 million for Coconut Road was not criminal. It was nothing more than clerical correction, but if Congress wanted the Justice Department to investigate, he was all for it. He said he had nothing to hide.
Later Mack confronted Young and called him a liar. This is high drama in Washington.
Who’s lying? Who’s telling the truth? Can someone with a pencil really change laws after they are passed by Congress?
Thank goodness the Justice Department has been invited in to sort all this out. That was our thinking until we read a news story posted Thursday on Politico, a respected news Web site.
Reporter Patrick O’Connor wrote:
“The Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, a recent court ruling and aggressive efforts of the House general counsel make it exceedingly difficult for federal prosecutors to investigate — let alone prosecute — members of Congress or their staffs for wrongdoing that may have occurred in the legislative process.”
There’s good reason for that. There are three separate branches of government by design. If you have the branches continually investigating each other or jockeying to rule over the other, the nation is in trouble. But, O’Conner’s story said, some critics of the way Washington works says Congress is banking on the Justice Department being hamstrung.
His story quoted Melanie Stone, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, warning that the House members agreed to the investigation knowing that it will go nowhere:
“It’s laughable,” she said. “They want the headlines, so they’re going to do this. But it’s an absolute farce.”
We’re not laughing.