Your tax dollars at work.
Some roast highway bill over its scent of pork Alaskan 'bridge to nowhere,' local parkway among the perks that are driving criticism By BENNETT ROTH Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
KETCHIKAN, ALASKA - If taxpayers want to see how their federal highway dollars are spent, they should head north to this small port (pop. 15,000), which just got a $223 million federal grant to build one of the nation's largest bridges.
Rising 200 feet above water and almost as long as the Golden Gate on San Francisco Bay, the bridge will link this tourist-oriented town at the southern tip of the state to an island with about 50 inhabitants and an airport with fewer than 10 flights a day.
The public money was secured by the state's lone congressman, Don Young, the powerful chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. A former tugboat captain, he once described himself as "not one of these smooth, namby-pamby politicians."
Deriding the project as a "bridge to nowhere," critics charge that it is one the most egregious examples of "pork barrel" spending that members of Congress stuffed into the $286.4 billion highway bill, the same law funding the Metro's light rail-bus system in Houston.
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