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Mary Prybylo is a senior vice president of Covenant Health and president of St. Joseph Healthcare. J. Bradford Coffey is a senior vice president of Covenant Health and president of the Covenant Health Foundation.
Today’s version of the federal earmark process is a good thing for this country, and for Maine.
In 2011 Congress eliminated the practice of approving earmarks in its budget. Americans and their representatives had become convinced that earmarks needed to be discontinued, particularly after several noteworthy examples of waste and corruption had become known. It was an understandable reaction by Congress, as nobody wanted to see hard-earned tax dollars spent on programs that lacked substantial and meaningful public benefit and, in some cases, lent themselves to corruption.
Approximately 10 years later, then-U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, in his capacity as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, introduced a vastly different version of earmarks to Congress under the name Congressionally Directed Spending (CDS).
We believe these new earmarks are an effective means of utilizing tax dollars. Why? First, the money goes where it is needed, and the funds are having demonstrable positive impacts. Unlike earmarks that were awarded before 2012, today’s version of the earmark is highly transparent, with each member of Congress required to post online what they are supporting. Second, applicants for CDS funding must demonstrate that there is strong public support for each request. Finally, it must be clear that CDS funding is benefiting the community at large.
Each year, municipalities and non-profits across the nation are encouraged to apply for federal CDS support. Applications are submitted directly to members of Congress in both the Senate and the House of Representatives (where they are called Community Project Funding). Members of Congress consider the applications and submit those requests they feel are worthy to the pertinent Appropriations subcommittees. The various budgetary subcommittees then determine whether to include any or all requested dollars in their budgets.
CDS has now been a key bipartisan part of the congressional budget-making process for three years. Thousands of municipalities and non-profits submit CDS requests to their elected officials in all 50 states. Here in Maine, CDS funds have been used for new water treatment facilities, roads, bridges, daycare facilities, and many facets of higher education. For example, at St. Joseph Healthcare, CDS funding helped us recently acquire lifesaving, state-of-the-art mammography equipment thanks to the efforts of Sen. Susan Collins and Sen. Angus King.
There are hundreds of billions of federal tax dollars spent annually in this country, most of which is directed and managed by well-intentioned government workers employed in federal agencies based in Washington, D.C. These federal workers are anonymous to most Americans, and they are not elected by members of the public. CDS requests, however, originate from people working for local municipalities and non-profit organizations and are evaluated by our elected officials who live in our states. What these elected officials do with the requests is made very public, and all can scrutinize whether the process is fair and if the funds are having the intended impacts.
Mainers have benefitted in many ways from CDS funding, and we have our federal congressional delegations to thank for helping us fund these projects.
