Denver, Colorado…With the Senate race here considered closest in the nation, local officials are bracing for the possibility of needing... View Article
Continue readingSwing State Diary: Colorado–Home Stretch
Denver, Colorado…With five days to go before Election Day, outside spending on Colorado’s Senate race is now over $30 million,... View Article
Continue readingSwing State Confidential: Colorado–more American Crossroads
Denver, Colorado…Today’s yield of political ads delivered along with a half hour of morning news (KDVR FOX 31) includes a... View Article
Continue readingSwing State Confidential: Colorado–Disclosure Lacking
Denver, Colorado…Two kinds of non-disclosure popped up in my half hour of TV news viewing this morning in Denver, ground... View Article
Continue readingSwing State Confidential: Colorado–What (Senator) Do Women Want?
Denver, Colorado…This morning’s crop of political advertisements–collected while watching a half hour of morning news on channel 4, CBS–in the... View Article
Continue readingSwing State Confidential: Colorado–American Action Network, Club for Growth & More
Denver, CO…This morning’s news broadcast on channel 7, ABC news, here in Denver began with the announcer reporting that Michelle... View Article
Continue readingSwing State Confidential: Colorado – Chamber & NEA Join the Fray
Denver, CO–I’m watching political ads airing on television news every morning here in the swing state of Colorado and following... View Article
Continue readingSwing State Confidential: Colorado
Denver, Colorado–Ah, life in a swing state. With several important races in play, we Coloradans are getting blasted with a... View Article
Continue readingDisappearmarks: How highway projects get left behind
(Photo courtesy of Leon Reed.)
In 1991 the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) received a $14.6 million federal earmark to reconstruct a highway interchange in downtown Mobile. After spending a portion of the funds on feasibility studies, engineers found that the project would require a great deal of additional federal and state money to complete. What’s more, their studies showed the proposed improvements would only increase highway speeds by an average of five miles per hour.
So they halted the project. And nineteen years later, $10.6 million of that original earmark remains unused ... Continue reading
Disappearmarks: Billions set aside for earmarks remain unspent
Last week Rep. Betsy Markey, D-Colo., introduced a bill that would redirect some $700 million in funds that have been languishing in Transportation Department accounts, designated to fund projects earmarked by members of Congress more than a decade ago and long since forgotten.
Sunlight's Reporting Group has been tracking these "disappearmarks"--projects requested by members of Congress that are never completed--or, at times, even begun. In some cases, that's due to changes in federal programs, in others, due to local opposition, to projects being ineligible for the earmarked funds, or because state and local authorities simply couldn't ...
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