Golden State Has Its Hand Out for Long Green

A million-dollar feasibility study of a train that would whisk passengers from Anaheim to Las Vegas in 86 minutes. A $3-million pedestrian bridge to help revitalize downtown Yorba Linda, home of the Richard Nixon presidential library ($3 million). And $100,000 for the “Kids Rock Free” educational program at the Fender Museum of Music and the Arts in Riverside.

California is surely one of the leaders -- if not No. 1 -- in the derby for funds earmarked for state projects in the gigantic spending bill that is limping toward enactment by Congress.

But relative to its size, California is probably way back in the pack, behind the likes of Alaska and West Virginia. Sens. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the chairman and the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, are legendary for taking care of the folks back home.

Lawmakers have packed thousands of projects, at a cost of several billion dollars, into their $328-billion spending bill, a measure that gives testament to former House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill’s adage, “All politics is local.”

So numerous are the back-home projects that, in the two weeks since the bill emerged from a House-Senate conference committee, no one has been able to add them up or categorize them. The bill was approved by the House on Monday, but a Senate vote was put off Tuesday until after the Senate returns from its holiday recess in January.

California appears likely to do as well as it did in last year’s big spending bill, in which it led all states in receiving nearly $589 million for lawmakers’ pet projects, according an analysis by the Citizens Against Government Waste, a taxpayer watchdog group. But California ranked 47th in per-capita federal spending last year. Alaska was first.

California may have fared better this year because of the increasing influence of the state’s 53-member California House delegation, Congress’ biggest.

California Republicans chair five House committees, more than any other state, and Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) is a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee. The state could do even better after next year because Lewis is in the running to become chairman of the panel in 2005 if Republicans remain in control of the House. The House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, is from San Francisco.

Lewis and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, were critical in securing funds for a number of projects and programs, including $225 million to clear away about 1 million trees killed by bark beetles in the state’s forests and to help prevent mudslides and help for farmers whose crops were damaged in this year’s wildfires.

While the new spending bill has been assailed as loaded with “pork” in a time of record federal budget deficits, many lawmakers defended the projects as important to their home towns.

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Riverside) said the projects for which he sought funding “reflect the diversity of my constituency, who pay taxes and expect to see a return of federal dollars to our communities.” Asked about the $100,000 for the “Kids Rock Free” educational program at Fender Museum, he said, “With schools cutting back musical programs, parents hoping to expose their children to music are left with few options outside of hiring expensive tutors or traveling to the Los Angeles area for these types of programs.”

Some House Democrats who voted against the Republican-drafted bill were among the first out with press releases touting the projects that received funds in their districts. And some Democrats were angry that Republicans refused to fund some of their projects because of their decision to vote against an earlier spending bill.

The spending measure would provide $300 million nationwide to help states pay for jailing illegal immigrants convicted of crimes, a large chunk of which would go to California. President Bush proposed no funding for the program for this year.

The bill also includes about $50 million toward building a federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles, as well as more than $30 million to fight agricultural pests, especially the glassy-winged sharpshooter, which has damaged the state’s wine industry.

Also provided is $200,000 to help the California Institute of the Arts provide training in animation, film editing, music recording, set and sound design and other programs that “directly support the entertainment and other creative industries in Southern California,” said Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita), who sought the funding.

McKeon also secured the $225,000 for public improvements for a shopping center in the high desert town of Adelanto. A McKeon spokesman said the project would stimulate the local economy and generate additional sales tax dollars by allowing residents to spend a large percentage of their incomes close to home. The spending measure also includes dozens of transportation projects, such as $4 million for planning work on extending the light rail Gold Line from Pasadena to Claremont; $3.2 million on safety improvements at railroad crossings in the San Gabriel Valley, and $1 million each for continued planning for two high-speed train lines powered by magnetic levitation, one in the Los Angeles region and the other between Anaheim and Las Vegas.

There is also $1.9 million -- on top of $1.5 million provided last year -- to transform an old train depot in Needles into a transit center.

But the bill omits funding for a rail project to connect East Los Angeles to Pasadena, a priority of Rep. Lucille Roybal Allard (D-East Los Angeles). She voted against the bill.

Also included is $3.1 million for building a pedestrian bridge that would link Main Street to the Yorba Station Shopping Center and the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace. Rep. Gary G. Miller (R-Diamond Bar), who sought the funding, called the project key to revitalizing the downtown business district.

Miller also included in the bill language that rescinds a Watergate-era law that has prevented the transfer of a large portion of Nixon’s presidential records from a National Archives facility in Maryland to the Nixon library. Officials from the two facilities still must devise a plan on how to transfer the 46 million pages of documents, 350,000 photographs, 4,000 videotapes, 2.2 million feet of film, 5,500 White House recordings and 30,000 gifts to a facility to be built adjacent to the Nixon Library, according to a Miller aide.