Body cameras, teacher housing, DNA tests: See all the local projects NC lawmakers want
DNA test kits in Wake and New Hanover counties. Body cameras for law enforcement in Graham County. Additional housing options for county employees and teachers in Northampton County.
These are just a few of the nearly 90 proposed projects that members of North Carolina’s U.S. House delegation submitted for funding under a new policy on earmarks.
Seven representatives in North Carolina’s 13-member delegation submitted “community project funding” requests by an April 30 deadline. As part of transparency requirements in the new process, all of the requests are published online.
Members must certify neither they, their spouse nor their immediate family have a financial interest in the project, no for-profit grantees will be accepted and the projects must have community support, according to appropriations committee rules. They can account for no more than 1% of total discretionary spending.
Earmarks — or money for projects put into larger spending bills by specific lawmakers — were banned by Congress in 2011, but House Democrats opted to return them this year. House Republicans, too, voted to allow their caucus to request them, though there was opposition. In the Senate, Democrats are in support and a Republican rule against them isn’t binding.
The requests, limited to 10 by any lawmaker for a single committee, are just the starting point. Far fewer are likely to be funded.
But earmarks allow Congress to have more discretion about where government money is spent and, some hope, could aid the lawmaking process by giving individual members of Congress a stake in legislation.
All five Democrats in the North Carolina delegation — Reps. G.K. Butterfield, Deborah Ross, David Price, Kathy Manning and Alma Adams — submitted requests. So did two of the eight Republicans in the delegation: Reps. David Rouzer and Madison Cawthorn.
Republican Rep. Ted Budd, who is running for U.S. Senate in 2022, proposed a permanent ban on earmarks earlier this year.
“Nothing epitomizes what’s wrong with Washington more than pork-barrel spending in the form of congressional earmarks,” Budd said in February. “It’s an insult to taxpayers to resurrect such a wasteful and corruptive system.”
Rep. Dan Bishop of Charlotte signed onto a letter from Budd and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz opposing earmarks in March.
Among the requests from Ross, who represents much of Wake County, was $500,000 for the Raleigh-Wake City-County Bureau of Identification to purchase equipment needed to conduct DNA analysis on crime scene evidence. Rouzer, whose district stretches from Johnston County to Wilmington, requested $400,000 for the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office to purchase rapid DNA tests.
Included in Cawthorn’s nearly $53,000 request for body cameras on behalf of the Graham County Sheriff’s Office was an explanation that the equipment would help reduce racial disparity and “the number of police misconduct complaints from citizens.”
A $4 million duplex and townhouse facility in Jackson was requested by Butterfield on behalf of Northampton County, which sees “workforce housing” as one way to recruit and retain employees in the rural county.
We’ve posted a full list of the requests from North Carolina members: bit.ly/ncearmarks
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This story was originally published May 5, 2021 at 10:23 AM.
