Charles Taylor, wealthy businessman and banker, owns at least 14,000 acres of prime land in western North Carolina. He's also the local (Republican) congressman. So when he steers federal dollars to his district, sometimes he helps himself, too.
Last year, Mr. Taylor added $11.4 million to a big federal transportation bill to widen U.S. Highway 19, the main road through Maggie Valley, a rural resort town in the Great Smoky Mountains. His companies own thousands of acres near the highway there and had already developed a subdivision called Maggie Valley Leisure Estates.
Mr. Taylor also got $3.8 million in federal funds for a park now being built in downtown Asheville with fountains, tree-shaded terraces and an open-air stage. It's directly in front of the Blue Ridge Savings Bank, flagship of his financial empire.
...The Republican lawmaker is one of at least a half-dozen House members whose public actions in directing special-interest spending known as earmarks have also benefited their private interests or those of business partners, according to congressional, corporate and real-estate records.
...the growth of earmarks and the secrecy that shrouds the practice inevitably raises questions of self-dealing. Earmarking has been at the center of the influence-peddling and corruption probes that have shaken public confidence in Congress this year. The practice also played a central role in the case against former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. The California Republican was imprisoned after pleading guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from defense firms in exchange for earmarks and other favors.
The growth of earmarking points to a shift in the way Congress works. Most federal spending originates in requests by departments and agencies. The Transportation Department might seek funds to build a highway interchange, for example, or the Pentagon might ask for new tanks. The spending proposals are then put into legislation which must win approval by Congress.
Earmarks are different because lawmakers can directly insert them into spending bills, often without public scrutiny. Many lobbyists and corporations have discovered in recent years that one of the fastest ways to get the spending they desire is to approach an individual lawmaker of either party on the House or Senate appropriation panel about an earmark. That has fed the growth in earmarks to an estimated $47.4 billion last year from $19.5 billion a decade earlier, according to the Congressional Research Service.
...Among those receiving funding from earmarks sponsored by Mr. Taylor are nonprofit groups that he helped create and that are run by business partners and supporters. The largest of these, the Education and Research Consortium of the Western Carolinas, has received more than $30 million from Mr. Taylor's earmarks in recent years, according to the consortium's Web site. The consortium is run by a former top executive of his bank, who is Mr. Taylor's nephew. Several of the nonprofits list addresses in the Art Deco tower in Asheville's central Pack Square, where Mr. Taylor's own business ventures are based.
...Every one of Congressman Taylor's earmarks in the last transportation bill was for a project near property that either he or one of his companies owns," says Erich Zimmermann, who studied the bill's special-interest spending for the nonpartisan Washington group Taxpayers for Common Sense.
