A long winding partially underwater earmarked road?
By Bill Allison Aug 01 2008 7:26 p.m.Commenter Archie Mead points out something I didn't know about the discrepancy between Rep. Neil Abercrombie's description of an earmark and the description of what I believe is the same earmark in the House Appropriations Committee report:
Even with the name Abercrombie to connect the two entries, it's still very vague. Saddle Road, which connects the harbor to the inland Pohakuloa Training Area, location of war games for Iraq-bound troops and Stryker tanks, is located on the Big Island, while Schofield Barracks is located on Oahu, another island.
I doubt that Saddle Road will be running underwater, but googling around, I found out some more. Abercrombie lists the beneficiary of his bill as being the Schofield Barracks on Oahu--I assume that means that the the barracks will be getting (and spending) the money. It looks like previous phases, however, were overseen by a different entity:
The Central Federal Lands Highway Division of the Federal Highway Administration in cooperation with the Hawaii Department of Transportation is administering a construction project to improve Saddle Road in the County of Hawaii from milepost 19 to milepost 35. Improvements consist of grading, drainage, hot asphaltic concrete pavement, and superpave asphalt concrete pavement.A construction contract was awarded to Goodfellow Brothers, Inc. on May 2, 2006 for the contract amount of $59,070,942.00.
So will the Schofield Barracks be choosing its own contractor for the next phase or will the Central Federal Lands Highway Division of the Federal Highway Administration continue to administer the project? And who will really be the recipient of these funds? Contractors like Goodfellow Brothers? (They did win that $59 million contract under full and open competition, according to FedSpending.org.
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