North Carolina's members of Congress quietly took control of more than $135 million from the state Department of Transportation last year to help pay for dozens of highway projects they favored.

That means other projects deemed more important by state and local officials must be delayed.

The new projects dictated by Congress didn't have enough support in North Carolina to be included among the 2,337 funded in the state's 2006-2012 Transportation Improvement Program. But some local officials and others hired Washington lobbyists to plead their case for highway money.

The congressional highway spending mandates in the transportation reauthorization bill, called earmarks, usually provide no additional money. They require that existing funds be spent on specific projects.

New projects earmarked by members of the delegation include pedestrian and bike paths in Cary, Durham and Durham County, and roads for a park in Asheville and a university athletic facility in Charlotte.

A road-widening project Concord wanted went from not-on-the-horizon to build-it-in-2009 -- lightning speed for major highway work.

Drivers pay 48.3 cents in tax on each gallon of gasoline they buy in North Carolina -- that's 18.4 cents in federal taxes and 29.9 cents in state taxes. Within broad guidelines set by Congress, the states have traditionally decided how to spend their share of federal gasoline tax receipts. But that is changing.

The growth of earmarks in the transportation reauthorization bill, which Congress considers about every six years, has been remarkable. It raises questions about who knows best how to spend federal highway money: members of Congress, or state and local officials and the highway planners who assist them.

In 1987, the transportation reauthorization bill included 152 earmarks, and President Reagan vetoed it, in part because he considered that too many. In last year's bill, there were 6,371, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog.

In North Carolina, highway earmarks in the reauthorization bill now represent 6 percent to 7 percent of the $4.4 billion in federal money the state expects to get from 2005 to 2009.

Calvin W. Leggett, manager of the state Department of Transportation's Program Development Branch, said there has been some grumbling among local planning groups but, so far, they have all deferred to the congressional delegation and approved the new projects.

"People in Washington make laws," he said. "They make laws about lots of things. Transportation is just a small piece of what they do. What kind of debate's gonna ensue if you ... defy 'em?"

Rob Peter, pay Paul

To build projects earmarked by Congress, the state must almost always take money from other plans.

For its Derita Road widening project, Concord got four earmarks totaling $9.95 million. All that money would have come to North Carolina anyway -- but for other projects. Something had to go. In this case, the widening of Poplar Tent Road in Concord will be delayed at least four years.

Most of the time, there is no way to know which projects are being delayed because of earmarks. Those projects are commingled with other work delayed because of inflation or because of other, more pressing, needs. The draft of the 2007-2013 state Transportation Improvement Program, released in August, identified more than 125 projects the state plans to delay "to assist in balancing funds."

Congressional legislation does not say who earmarked a project, although most North Carolina lawmakers claimed credit for certain projects in news releases. And the legislative language is so vague that it is often difficult to know who is benefiting. An earmark intended for Queens University in Charlotte, for example, does not mention the university.

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