Marin Independent Journal
Sunday, August 14, 2005
WHAT WOULD you do if somebody gave you $20 million to plan a ferry operation that no one seems to want?
That's what happened last week, when Congress approved a $286.5 billion transportation bill. Tucked away in the bill were more than 6,300 special projects designed to please local voters.
One of these special projects - a $20 million grant to a private company for ferry service from Port Sonoma - has made waves locally.
The $20 million is going to the North Bay Ferry Service, a company created last year by Sausalito developer Harvey "Skip" Berg. Berg used to own what was then called Sears Point Raceway, and has tried to build housing developments in Marin County.
The grant to his company came as a surprise to local politicans, including Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, the Democrat from Petaluma whose district includes Marin. "It was something not on my priority list," she said.
Launching any ferry service from the Port of Sonoma, which is on Highway 37 at the mouth of the Petaluma River, is going to be like swimming up Niagara Falls. An endangered bird, the clapper rail, lives along the Petaluma River and in the marshes along the bay. Barbara Salzman, a Marin Audubon Society leader, says ferry service and the dredging it requires would harm the bird and other wildlife by altering mud flats and tidal marshes.
Berg's company may nonetheless get $5 million a year for the next four years.
What's worrisome is the lack of transparency in the congressional budgeting process, and the stink of back-room political horsetrading. Without any public discussion or input from our locally elected officials, $20 million of your money has been earmarked for a project that doesn't have much local support or, on the face of it, make much sense.
But there's a way to set things aright: A congressional allocation committee still must decide to write the check. Just because the transportation bill sets a total budget with set-asides for specific projects doesn't mean that the money actually gets spent.
Let's hope Congresswoman Woolsey tells her colleagues on the allocation committee that this project needs a second look before it gets funded. The ferry project does not seem realistic. The odds are that it will get bogged down in red tape while a variety of interest groups fight to stop it. Spending money on it will be a shameful waste.
But the larger issue is this: The way the transportation bill doled out the public's money has done nothing but fuel cynicism about American politics.