Radio Winona reports:
President Barack Obama Wednesday signed an appropriations bill that contains funding for sixteen important projects in southern Minnesota, including for the WSU center.
Congressman Tim Walz says the bill contained $700,000 for the National Child Protection Training Center which will help the center keep operating. The center trains social workers, teachers, and healthcare professionals to recognize and report signs of child abuse.
The bill also contains nearly $2.4 million for a four-lane expansion if Highway 14 between Waseca and Owatonna. It contains $200,000 for the Sheriff's Youth Program in Rochester, and another $712,000 for a new 60 bus garage facility to serve as a transit operations center in Rochester.
The Austin Hormel Institute gets $323,000 to develop an International Center of Research Technology to provide cutting edge technology to biomedical researchers from across the country. And $713,000 goes to Minnesota State-Mankato for its Center for Renewable Energy.
WSU's National Child Protection Training
Center is an interesting exhibit in the national debate over earmark reform. One small part of that debate was launched yesterday by Jeff Rosenberg at MnPublius in the post Let’s have a more intelligent discussion of earmarks.
There's a mostly intelligent discussion going on, and we recommend that our readers add their thoughts.
One commenter suggests that all federal funds be doled out according to a competitive grant process, with grant applications being reviewed and scored. The implicit assumption is that an administration or bureaucracy will always be more fair and less corrupt than congressional review.
Administrations too need scrutiny. The recent history of grant applications by the Child Protection Training Center demonstrates that the grant process too can be corrupted. As we've posted repeatedly in the past year, Congressman Walz and others sought the earmarks for the Center after a high-scoring grant application to the DOJ's youth justice program division was turned down--and a Bush administration sent money to a much lower scoring youth golf program.
Last March, in Walz brings DOJ grant process to Waxman's attention we noted Peter Cohn's article in Government Executive:
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., is investigating how a Justice Department agency awarded grants in fiscal 2007, when most federal agencies operated with a freer hand under the yearlong earmark moratorium Democrats imposed.
Waxman wrote to Attorney General Michael Mukasey March 13 requesting a briefing no later than Friday -- and related documents by April 4 -- in response to reports that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention awarded noncompetitive grants in fiscal 2007 to less-qualified applicants.
Citing a recent investigation by the trade publication Youth Today, Waxman noted that in fiscal 2007 the the office awarded a $500,000 grant to the World Golf Foundation, even though its application was ranked lower than 38 other bids in a review done by career Justice Department officials. . . .
. . .Waxman said the situation was brought to light by Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn., a freshman who complained that a worthy applicant in his district was unfairly shut out of the grant-making process in fiscal 2007. An aide to Walz said his interest was piqued when OJJDP ignored a request to direct money to the National Child Protection Training Center at Winona State University, even though it ranked fourth out of more than 100 applicants in the agency's review.
The center trains social workers, teachers, nurses, police officers and others to detect and respond to signs of child abuse. The funding was dropped when the OJJDP administrator made the final decisions. Walz and other Minnesota lawmakers successfully restored about $1.2 million for the center in the fiscal 2008 omnibus appropriations bill, including $446,000 funded through OJJDP. . . .
Murray Waas and others covered the Waxman committee investigations last June.
There's also the case of the Lewis and Clark Regional Water System. Though a big-ticket item, the project will provide an essential service for residents and businesses in three states: potable water for people and livestock. After praising the project earlier, President Bush zeroed it out in his budget--without explanation. Down in Southwestern Minnesota, Cornerhouse Comments reacted at the time.
At Bluestem, we've been writing about transparency and accountibility in the earmark process (see our archived government reform posts), and are please to see more discussion underway on Minnesota's blogshere. Go over and add your thoughts to the MnPublius thread.
More on the background of the WSU's child protection center from the Mankato Free Press.
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