Bonner earmark #3
By Bill Allison Feb 23 2008 11:03 p.m. 3 commentsI thought this one would be harder.
Rep. Jo Bonner, the newest member of the Appropriations Committee, secured $245,000 for "Atmore road improvement" in the Transportation and Housing & Urban Development Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2008. (Sen. Richard Shelby requested the same in the Senate.)
The City of Atmore spent $80,000 on a pair of lobbying firms in 2007, the Bloom Group Inc. and Bradley, Arant, Rose & White LP. The Bloom Group's year-end report says, on page 2, that the firm was lobbying on, among other things, "Transportation HUD Appropriations bill, seeking federal funding for city projects." Hal W. Bloom, the lobbyist who represented the city of Atmore, contributed $2,250 to Bonner between March 25, 2002 and Sept. 12, 2007. Meanwhile, a pair of employees of Bradley, Arant et al, who disclosed lobbying on the Transportation/HUD Appropriations bill, seeking federal funding for city projects" in their year-end report, chipped in $500 to his campaigns between 2006 and 2007.
Again, not a lot of money, but then, I haven't gone beyond OpenSecrets' simple Donor Lookup search to look for more...
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I live near Atmore and do not understand where you think this is newsworthy. $2,250 over a 5 1/2 year period , by a "pair" of employees, is suppose to be an influence?Also, if I read the House/Senate rules about lobbying reports correctly, the reporting person has to round up to the next $20,000 every 6 months. So if someone reports $40K a year, that means the fees could be anything from the $10K threshold to $20K. I seem to remember that our local paper said the city paid $2000 a month for the lobbyist, and it has received at least several million dollars back over the time period to which you refer. (I wish my county would hire the same person!)Maybe it's just me, but I would rather my congressman make decisions about how to spend our money than some beaurocrat in Washington. At least I get to vote for, or against, the congressman if I dont like what they do. I think y'all are off target on this earmark thing.
Like I said, it's not a lot of money -- but as I think I also said, I'm just looking at raw FEC records for matches, not really digging much deeper than that.I don't necessarily think any of these items are "newsworthy" in and of themselves -- they're raw research, and I've still got quite a few earmarks to get through.With earmarks generally, what interests me is the question of access, and the price of admission. There are all kinds of competing needs in any congressional district -- plenty of worthy projects. How do lawmakers--who say they know their districts--find out about them? Is it from personal knowledge, or is it because they bump into a paid lobbyist at a fund-raising event who says, "Hey, we could really use some help with road improvement in Atmore." But if your roads are just as bad in, say, Brewton, and your city fathers haven't hired a lobbyist, does the lawmaker earmark funds to fix them?
[...] looking for this one — the City of Jackson employed the Bloom Group (already encountered in this post), but doesn’t seem to have hired a lobbyist since then. I wasn’t able to find out much [...]