Three years ago, Congress stripped a proposed Congressional earmark from an appropriations bill that would have provided funds for a bridge in Alaska that would connect an island with 50 residents to the mainland. The project became famous as “The Bridge to Nowhere” – a potent symbol for opponents of Congressional earmarks. The bridge became a minor issue in the 2008 presidential election, when Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin claimed to have put a stop to the project. (It later came out that Palin had initially supported the project, before she was against it.)
In a recent article in Newsweek, the newly acted mayor of Ketchikan, Alaska defended the project. Turns out the bridge wasn’t recently about connecting 50 people to the mainland, but connecting Ketcikan – Alaska’s fourth largest community – to its airport. Also as the mayor points out, Ketckikan is surrounded by mountains and the only place it can grow is across the strait to Gravina Island.
The popular perception is that all earmarks are bad earmarks. Earmark opponents have used the Gravina Island bridge project to make this point. However, as the mayor Ketchikan notes, earmarks are often a good way for federal lawmakers to meet the needs of their communities, more effectively than the federal bureaucracy can acting on its own.