Political Influence on the Recovery Act

[1]Pop quiz time folks. If you had $15 million in Recovery Act funding to spend on a border checkpoint, which of these two checkpoints would you choose to spend the money on:

A) A checkpoint in Laredo, Texas, which serves more than 55,000 travelers and 4,200 trucks a day, and is rated among the government's highest priorities,

or

B) A sleepy Montana checkpoint along the Canadian border that sees about three travelers a day.

Personally, I would probably go with option A.

But unfortunately, according to a recent AP report [2] (via Christopher Flavelle at Propublica [3]), in reality, the second checkpoint was chosen, and it will soon be receiving a border station "the size and cost of a Hollywood mansion." The reason for this choice? Political influence.

The Department of Homeland Security, which is in charge of border checkpoints, maintains a list of these checkpoints, ranked in order of which they should receive important upgrades. The point of the list is to ensure that upgrades are provided in an objective way, and it theoretically prevents checkpoints like the Montana one from being chosen. In this instance, however, the AP points the finger at Montana's senators, Max Baucus and Jon Tester, both of whom apparently lobbied Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to spend the money on the Montana checkpoint.

This article is just another reminder for why transparency is so vital. Despite best efforts to keep earmarks and political influence out of the Recovery Act, the example of the Montana border checkpoint shows that it's still incredibly easy to subtly manipulate the spending process.

Granted, the funding for this checkpoint is a relatively small amount, but if the Recovery Act is to have its full impact, the money needs to be spent in the places which need it the most. For instance, in the example above, Laredo has 9.4 percent unemployment, and Whitetail, Montana (population 71) has 4 percent unemployment. In a more transparent system, say if Homeland Security published the repair list, which right now is not publicly available, examples like this would not exist. Political power would not influence these kinds of decisions, and the Recovery Act funding would be flowing to the truly distressed regions of the country.

As a final side not, ideally, information such as the checkpoint repair list is exactly what should be included on the new Recovery.gov. It's good to know where the money is going, but transparency is meaningless without context.

Image by Flickr user Sebastian Bergmann [4] used under a Creative Commons license.