After all the flaps during the past two years about earmarks like that Bridge to Nowhere that Sen. Ted Stevens said better be funded or he would deprive the citizens of the United States the privilege of his further public service, you would think Washington politicians in both parties would be wary of getting themselves involved in a similar earmark scandal. You would especially think that Speaker Nancy Pelosi would be the last Washington politician likely to be linked to an earmark of question virtue, let alone to one that seems so much like Stevens’ Bridge to Nowhere. But there it is in today’s edition of The San Francisco Weekly — reporter Matt Smith with a detailed story about Pelosi’s $1.2 billion worth of earmarks for a Subway to Nowhere connecting the Giants ballpark with downtown San Fran. Numbers like that make Stevens look like a piker with his mere $500 million or so for the Alaska boondoggle. Even Sen. Trent Lott’s Railroad to Nowhere earmarkfest was worth “only” about $750 million. Smith quotes from the report of an independent consultant hired by the Municipal Transportation Authority to evaluate the Central Subway project: “According to consultant Tom Matoff, San Franciscans will get little in return for this massive federal expenditure. The Central Subway project will not significantly improve our ability to get from one place to another, and it will make the city’s public transportation system more expensive to run and maintain. In addition, its rationale is based on bogus financing and ridership numbers. “If built as planned, the Central Subway ‘might actually worsen travel conditions for some customers, without a compensating improvement,’ Matoff wrote. ‘It does not, apparently, meet the market needs of the corridor it is intended to serve.’ “Pelosi has already secured ‘cost-effectiveness’ exemptions in the 2005 federal transportation bill to smooth the way for what is expected to be $532 million in federal grants to fund the Central Subway. “Meanwhile, S.F. Municipal Transportation Agency chief Nat Ford has, during recent weeks, been making the rounds in Washington, stumping for around $200 million more needed to fund the project.” The San Francisco Weekly report hits the streets here in D.C. the same day the Pelosi-led House adopted with only one dissenting vote new rules requiring public disclosurer of the names of Members of Congress sponsoring all earmarks and making other changes in the congressional ethics rules. Earmarks Pelosi Congress Pork Porkbusters GOP
