January 9th 2018
President Trump today, left a few mouths hanging open when he made a seemingly offhand comment about bringing back Earmarks. Not the first time he has expressed an idea that at first shocks, but upon sober reflection turns out to be worth discussing.
Recently, the Tulare County Sheriff and District Attorney held a news conference on a major case involving cattle, fraud and a number of other charges against a person who victimized a number of ranchers and agricultural interests. What few people realize is that the Ag Crimes unit responsible for bringing this person to justice would not exist without the earmark procedure both at the state and federal level.
The rural crime task force grew out of a proposal I wrote a couple of decades ago and presented to Chuck Poochigian (who now serves on the appellate court, but years ago was the appropriations chair for the State Assembly.) Chuck carried the funding bill, specifically earmarked for Tulare County, and placed it in the state budget. Thereafter, even though Chuck’s party lost control of the Assembly, Governor Pete Wilson continued each year to include the appropriation in the state budget he sent to the legislature. It was that earmark that funded the investigators in both the Sheriffs office as well as the District Attorney’s office. It also provided for prosecutors and support staff in the District Attorney’s office.
The program was successful and our next goal was to export it to surrounding counties. To accomplish that I traveled multiple times to Washington D. C. On more than one occasion I was accompanied by supervisors Jim Maples and Bill Sanders. Congressman Bill Thomas, who at the time was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee fashioned an earmark that allocated well over a million dollars to the Tulare County District Attorney’s office specifically to create a multi-county agricultural crimes task force using high technology (for the time) to protect the Ag industry. That’s exactly what we did and the funding continued for a number of years.
And it worked. Still does.
Then came the movement to eliminate earmarks. Because of the experiences I just described, I always had ambivalent feelings about doing away with earmarks. I remember arguing our case to legislators both at state and federal level as well as to their committee staffers, that the Ag industry sent plenty of taxes in to the government every year, but given the unique nature of trying to protect vast acreage and live perishable products, both plant and animal, we couldn’t effectively protect our farmers and ranchers with the level of funding we could provide at the local level.
Were there abuses of earmarks? I’m sure. But for our county they did a lot of good. And the legacy of what was created using earmarks continues to protect a vital industry.
A couple,of,other points. It wasn’t some disconnected administrative technicians deciding what we needed. Our own representatives, the ones we elected, did. And when you have legislatures debating, and, yes, maybe trading programs to benefit their constituents perhaps there would be more reason to work together and there might be less polarization.
Earmarks? Wouldn’t hurt to take another look.