Watchdog Calls for Investigation of GOP Rep’s Mucky Earmark

Hopefully we’re about to get closer to learning how Rep. Don Young’s (R-AK) $10 million Coconut Road earmark made its famous post-vote change. A Washington watchdog group filed a complaint today with the House ethics committee asking for an investigation into the drastic edit, calling it “an extraordinary case of the House of Representatives’ integrity being undermined.”

You can read the complaint here.

Ryan Alexander, executive director for the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense, said her group filed the request for an investigation because in reviewing thousands of earmarks, they have never come across one that was altered after a Congressional vote.

“We don’t have any information that this has ever happened before,” Alexander said. “We thought this was extraordinary enough that it was worth asking someone to get to the bottom of it. The ethics committee is in the position to do that, to get the relevant information from committee staff and members of Congress.”

Initially, Congress approved a bill that would have given Florida $10 million for a highway widening project, but as we’ve explained before, during a 13-day window between the bill passing Congress and the President signing it into law, the earmark changed. It was the only such change among 6,000 earmarks in a pork-filled bill. The new Coconut Road wording redirected the money to a project that would be a boon to a real estate developer and major campaign contributor of Young’s.

The timing of the change could mean that the earmark or the transportation bill itself may not have the effect of law, the watchdog group alleges in its complaint:

The actions taken by Rep. Young’s staff to change an earmark after final Congressional approval is an apparent violation of Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution, that provides, “Every Bill shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate,” before it becomes a law.

The surreptitious change could also be a violation of House rules, if it turns out that an enrolling clerk worked under the direction of a Transportation Committee staff member. The group says one House rule is very clear on the issue: “the enrolling clerk should make no change, however unimportant, in the text of a bill to which the House has agreed.”

The story of what exactly happened behind the scenes to change the Coconut Road has remained a mystery.