Virginia Firm Dreams Up Earmarks for Clients

Related Content

Audio

Print

E-Mail

Reprints

Text Size

Latest News

• New York Times: Ensign Tried to Help Mistress’ Husband Get Lobby Work
• Democrats Nearing Deal on Reconciliation
• House Defeats Call for Afghanistan Troop Withdrawal
• Washington Post Reports Ethics Closes Massa Case
• Georgia Democrats Press Ethics Committee to Complete Investigation of Rep. Deal

On July 12, 2007, Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) sent a letter to the chairman and ranking member of the House Education and Labor Committee asking that they insert language into the No Child Left Behind reauthorization bill to fund a project for at-risk youth.

He wrote that the project had been proposed by Grace College, a private evangelical college in his Congressional district, and the Ventura County (Calif.) Office of Education to match up the college’s experience in educating prisoners with the county’s expertise in reaching at-risk youth.

But the project linking two geographically distant entities was really the brainchild of Anchor Consulting, a small lobbying firm that represents both the VCOE and Grace College. The firm pitched the partnership to the clients, wrote the legislative language and drafted the letter for Souder’s signature, according to people involved in the process and documents obtained by Roll Call.

On July 13, the day after Souder’s letter was sent, Scott Wilk, Western regional manager for Virginia-based Anchor Consulting, attended a VCOE board meeting, where he described the project to the board members, several of whom were hearing about it for the first time.

Wilk said it would be a five-year program authorized for $3 million a year, and that while Grace and VCOE would have to figure out later how to distribute the responsibilities and the budget, Ventura County would get a minimum of $1 million a year from the project.

At the time, the board had no staff dedicated to the project. Yet Anchor reported that the proposal already had been endorsed by Souder and that his status as a “swing vote” on the committee made it likely it would be approved.

At the board meeting — a recording of which is available here — Wilk outlined the firm’s approach, which lobbying experts say is probably not unique, though it is rare that the public hears about it. Rather than the client coming to the lobbyist for help in obtaining funding for a project, the lobbyist creates ways to deliver federal money for the client, even for projects the client had no plan to pursue.

Instead of trying to get funding to fix weaknesses, Wilk told the board, “a lot of times what we do is we want to take your strengths, because we can sell that, get you money — and as you know all funds are fungible — and then maybe take some of that money out and go and put it to your other needs.”

He described another client, a California arts school that needed money to replace its outdated air conditioning system. Instead, Wilk said, Anchor conceived a project for the school to partner with the UCLA School of Medicine to produce AIDS-education videos for use in Africa, and got $12 million in federal money to launch the project. “They came looking for an air conditioner, now they are doing an AIDS program in Africa,” Wilk said.

Harry Henderson, the founder of Anchor Consulting, told Roll Call that Wilk was not suggesting that federal money be diverted from its intended purposes to other needs of the recipient organization. Rather, he said, if an organization is already operating a successful program, “if you can get the federal government to support it, you can take money that you were providing yourself and put it toward other needs.”

Anchor later told the VCOE that the budget for the project with Grace College was expanding to $5 million a year, with Grace taking in about $4 million of that, according to documents obtained by Roll Call. The biggest chunk of the budget would be a new, $8.5 million building on the Grace campus that would be used to host VCOE at-risk youth for four sessions of a two-week summer camp. Grace would continue to use the building throughout the year.

The at-risk youth partnership is not the first project Souder has pursued for Grace. In the omnibus appropriations bill passed by Congress in December, Souder is credited with a $195,000 earmark for “technology upgrades” on the Grace campus. With Indiana Sens. Dick Lugar (R) and Evan Bayh (D), Souder shared credit in the bill for a $1.1 million earmark for Grace College to develop an emergency services training center for the county.

While it is not unusual for religious institutions to get earmarks, Grace states on its Web site that the college “is for the evangelical Christian student for whom faith and spiritual maturity is a priority. This is why Grace is one of the few Christian colleges that requires a faith statement and spiritual life reference as a normal part of the application process.”