Department of Energy disputes Rep. Murtha’s claims on earmark request

The Department of Energy is denying Rep. John Murtha’s (D-Pa.) claim that it supports his $1 million earmark request for a project in his district aimed at protecting the nation’s natural-gas pipelines.

{mosads}Murtha attempted yesterday to quell criticism of a so-called mystery $1 million earmark to establish the Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure, a subsidiary of Concurrent Technology Corporation (CTC), a nonprofit technology innovation center in Johnstown, Pa., that has received millions of dollars in earmarks in recent years.

DoE spokeswoman Anne Kolton said yesterday the earmark is not a program that meets the department’s “mission critical” threshold, noting it was “inconsistent” with the department’s 2008 budget.

Anti-earmark crusader Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) challenged the earmark on the House floor Tuesday, asking if the “mysterious” Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure even existed because he and his staff couldn’t find a website for it.  Flake’s challenge failed, 98-326.

In response to Flake, Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.), who chairs the spending subcommittee responsible for the project, admitted he didn’t know whether it existed.

“At this time, I do not know,” Visclosky said. “But if it does not exist, the monies could not go to it.”

Republicans have since seized on that admission as evidence that Democrats are not serious about providing true earmark transparency as they agreed to do just weeks ago, after a standoff with House GOP leaders.

Republicans had protested a decision by Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) to not disclose earmarks in spending bills until House and Senate conference negotiations. Obey reversed course and agreed to make public each bill’s earmarks so that members could challenge them on the House floor and vote to have them stricken from the bill.

But since then, even those Democrats who strongly supported Flake’s earmark challenges last year have failed to do so in the same numbers this Congress. (See  sidebar.)

Visclosky’s assertion is at odds with a press release by Murtha himself, which noted that the $1 million earmark will be used to establish the Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure. The release discussed all the funds that Pennsylvania will receive in the Energy and Water spending bill.

“CTC has been working with the Department of Energy to use sensor technology to protect the nation’s pipelines and power grids,” the Murtha release said. “This initiative will develop and employ sensor networks for the supervision of pipeline systems to detect, identify, and prevent at an early stage material defects, pipe faults, gas leakages, or major damage due to natural disasters or human attack.”

In response to an inquiry from The Hill, Murtha spokesman Matthew Mazonkey provided a written statement that said the center would be devoted to the security of pipelines that provide natural gas to “over 175 million residential, commercial, and industrial customers.”

“Funding this project will address the two highest priority needs of the pipeline network as identified in the DoE National Gas Infrastructure R&D Delivery Reliability Roadmap: sensors and security,” read the statement. “This initiative will also devise the necessary warning/protection/coordination/response measures to mitigate or thwart natural or human threats.”

According to DoE spokeswoman Kolton, the same earmark was included in a 2007 appropriations bill, and that DoE leadership decided against supporting it then. The 2007 continuing spending resolution stripped out all the earmarks, so Murtha attached it to this year’s bill.

“The administration’s position is that we’re no longer supporting research and development for oil and gas because we feel that those industries are performing well enough and they don’t need energy and gas initiatives,” she said.  

Mazonkey had no comment on the DoE denial.

Whether the administration supports it or not, Flake spokesman Matthew Specht said the information was too little, too late.
“This is information that should have been available to members who aren’t on the Appropriations Committee before the bill went to the floor,” he said.

He said Flake only discovered that the CTC was involved after he requested Murtha’s earmark certification letter, a required notice to the chairman of the panel pledging that neither the congressman nor his wife has any financial interest in the project.