Today’s Must ReadIt looks like Rep. Don Young’s (R-AK) $10 million Coconut Road earmark has roped him into another FBI investigation, McClatchy reports.
Young slipped the money into a 2005 transportation bill just days after a real estate developer, Daniel Aronoff held a fundraiser in Florida that fetched Young $40,000 in campaign contributions. The earmark raised our eyebrows higher when a report commissioned by the local government in Lee County, Florida exposed how Young rewrote the bill’s language after the House and Senate had voted, but right before the legislation landed on the President’s desk, targeting the money specifically for a Coconut Road-I-75 interchange, rather than a larger project. The Coconut Road interchange is unpopular in the community, but a boon for Aronoff.
Already entangled in the widening, criminal Veco-Alaska corruption investigation, this scrutiny appears to be entirely separate, according to McClatchy:
Young’s action is among a number of congressional “earmarks” for specific pet projects drawing scrutiny from the Justice Department and an FBI team investigating alleged influence peddling on Capitol Hill, said the source, who insisted on anonymity.
As for the earmark, Young has not commented on the language change or the investigation. But his spokesman suggested a “just give it back” pattern that seems to be developing amongst Alaska politicians. No harm, no foul!
If the community doesn’t want it, Young thinks they’re free to give the money back, said the congressman’s chief of staff, Mike Anderson.
“There’s nothing nefarious here,” Anderson said. “If they want to return the money back to [the Department of Transportation], they can do that.”
A Lee County board did just that. They voted last week to return in the money to Congress, in hopes of having it reauthorized for broader I-75 work.
Notably, Anderson offered “no explanation” for how the earmark’s language changed after the transportation bill passed both houses of Congress.
