Published: May 12, 2009 12:23 am      

Mollohan seeks $100,000 for Marion

Says county has faired well in past

FAIRMONT — Congressman Allan B. Mollohan has officially requested $100,000 for his home county in federal appropriations funding for Fiscal Year 2010.

And although this is a relatively small percentage of the total more than $80 million request submitted last month, Mollohan pointed out that this one-year “snapshot” is not indicative of the overall financial contributions he has helped bring to Marion County.

“Marion County has faired extremely well with regard to not only earmarking that I have requested and that has been approved, but also from the programmatic efforts that we have undertaken in Marion County,” Mollohan said Monday.

“To accurately understand any member of Congress’ efforts, one has to look at those efforts over time,” he added. “A snapshot will never give you an accurate picture of whether it appears either to be a lot for an area or a little for an area because opportunities for earmarking are just that — opportunities.”

Nearly every year, Congress submits requests for federal earmarks. The earmarks are noncompetitive grants directed by Congress to specific constituents, usually in lawmakers’ own districts or states and are based on requests from the organizations and municipalities themselves. This is also known as pork barrel spending, and the concept is controversial on some fronts because it bypasses the normal competitions for federal grants.

In total, the congressman made requests for 69 appropriations projects for next fiscal year. This included four $25,000 requests for police equipment for the towns of Barrackville, Grant Town, White Hall and Fairview for Marion County this year. Some of the 69 requests Mollohan is asking for include:

• $3 million for a Parkersburg riverfront project.

• $225,000 for David storm drain construction.

• $825,000 for Rowlesburg drinking water improvements.

• $1.32 million for Glenville water system improvements.

• $1 million for Morgantown computerized traffic control systems.

Dave Herring, director of communications for Mollohan’s office, said there were a few other requests from Marion County as well, but confirmed that these four were the only ones included in the overall request.

One fairly significant chunk of the appropriations requests for next fiscal year was money allocated for higher education. According to documents posted on Mollohan’s Web site, more than $15.6 million has been requested for projects at West Virginia University, Glenville State College, Wheeling Jesuit University and West Liberty State College.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Mollohan gave Fairmont State University $846,000 in 2008 for a distance learning program. FSU was not included in Mollohan’s appropriations requests for next fiscal year, though, and Herring would not comment on whether the Marion County university made any requests that were not included. Herring explained that various factors determine which projects make the cut each year, and that once the requests are finished, the amount of projects that are actually funded also varies.

“I’m hesitant to attach a percentage,” Herring said of the granted requests. “They won’t all be funded, but some of them will be.”

Herring said two factors that help determine whether a project will be included are readiness of the project and importance of the project.

Mollohan said these are two objective considerations, but that there are also subjective factors that play into the decision-making as well.

One example he gave of a subjective consideration was the community’s opinion of the project’s impact on economic development. Such as, if the funding of a project would help restore an historic downtown sector that is important to the community. In any case, he said lots of thought, research and consideration goes into which projects are included in the final request package.

“These decisions are made very carefully and very delicately to be very responsive to all kinds of communities,” he said.

Mollohan added that while these appropriations are done for next fiscal year, his staff is currently working on a transportation appropriations bill that will have transportation-related requests in it. He would not comment on any of the details of what would be requested, but he said that if any more money is being requested for the developing Gateway Connector highway or any other roads projects, they could be included in these requests.

E-mail Mallory Panuska at mpanuska@timesw.com.