Senate calls for probe of Coconut Rd.

The Senate voted Thursday to direct the Department of Justice (DoJ) to investigate the controversial Coconut Road earmark connected to Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska).

Senators voted 64-28 to add the amendment to a measure making technical corrections to the 2005 highway bill, even though Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) Thursday said the House ethics committee should be the one to investigate the matter.

{mosads}Twenty Republicans backed the measure. Sens. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) opposed it.

The Senate action may be the first time the body has called for a Justice investigation into one of its projects, but passage in the House is uncertain.

 “Well, we have an ethics committee,” Pelosi said when asked about whether a congressional task force should be formed to look into the matter. “I don’t see why that would be necessary.”

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) sponsored the language calling on the DoJ to scrutinize the earmark in response to an amendment by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who wanted members of the House and Senate to handle the investigation.

Coburn’s amendment, which needed 60 votes for approval, was defeated 49-43.

Staffers working for Young placed the $10 million earmark for the Coconut Road interchange in Florida in the 2005 highway bill after the House and Senate passed the bill but before it reached the president’s desk. The original language called only for improving and widening Interstate 75 in Ft. Myers, Fla.

Young has said his staff made the change to the highway bill, Pelosi noted. She suggested that was a reason for the House ethics panel to investigate the matter. “And I think we should take that course of action, especially now since Congressman Young has said that his staff person did make that change after the fact. That’s just not right,” she said.

House Republican leaders said the Coconut Road earmark needed attention, but signaled opposition to the measure.

“My sense is that this whole issue needs to be looked at,” House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) told reporters on Thursday.

Blunt said that Young’s acknowledgment that his staff changed the highway bill should be looked into but that the legislative branch has mechanisms to review the matter, alluding to the House ethics committee.

“The attorney general does not work for Congress,” he said.

He added, “If the [allegations are true], there are plenty of ways to pursue questions of a member of Congress.”

Critics accuse Young of abusing the legislative process to benefit real estate developers who wanted the interchange to improve access to their property. Those developers include Daniel Aronoff, who owns 4,000 acres along Coconut Road and helped Young raise $40,000 at a February 2005 fundraiser.

Coburn, along with the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, has spent months calling on the House ethics committee to investigate the matter. The tax group has said it never received a reply from the ethics committee.

“By rigging the congressional investigation process to fail, Congress has once again told the American people that the earmark favor factory hasn’t been shut down, but turned over to new management,” Coburn said.

Pelosi denied telling Senate Democrats that an amendment calling for an investigation into the earmark would be a poison pill. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) office circulated talking points Thursday urging colleagues to oppose the Coburn amendment, and suggesting it would not pass muster in the House.

The memo argued that creating a congressional task force made up of  members of the House and Senate  raised “major Constitutional issues under the Speech and Debate clause because it allows one chamber to investigate another’s members.

“The constitutional concerns are likely to prevent the Technical Corrections bill from becoming law, because the House has serious Constitutional concerns — the Coburn amendment is a poison pill,” Democrats wrote in the memo.

Coburn argued that calling on the Justice Department to investigate a House rules violation was taking the matter too far. He also said media reports indicate the FBI already has looked into the matter.

“The Boxer amendment sets the troubling and bizarre precedent of turning the attorney general into the de facto Senate and House Parliamentarian,” Coburn said after the vote. “Violating congressional rules is not a crime, yet Congress has just given away its right to police itself with this misguided amendment.”

Boxer said Senate Democrats were simply trying to take Coburn’s concerns to heart without creating politically charged investigations that could violate the Constitution.

“Senators investigating House members or House members investigating senators — it’s unconstitutional on its face,” she said. “I feel like we’ve done the right thing on the matter.”

Any investigation is likely to focus on interactions between a lobbyist who represented Aronoff’s interests and aides working for Young, either on the Transportation Committee or his personal staff.

In 2005, Rick Alcalde, a lobbyist at Potomac Partners, represented both Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) and Aronoff’s Landon Companies. Landon Companies, a real estate company, has paid Alcalde’s firm (first Ogilvy Government Relations, then Potomac Partners) a combined $580,000 since 2003. FGCU has paid Potomac Partners $140,000 since 2005.

Through a spokeswoman, Young has said the earmark was inserted because FGCU and area residents had expressed a need for a hurricane evacuation route. If they have changed their minds, they were within their right to do so, she said.

Democrats are targeting Young’s seat this year.

Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.), who represents the district receiving the earmark, has tried to distance himself from the controversy. Last year, a spokesman for Mack acknowledged this his boss sent a letter to FGCU expressing his support for an interchange at Coconut Road.

The spokesman emphasized that FGCU has long wanted the interchange as part of its efforts to develop a transportation management center as a resource for its students to study transportation, traffic and homeland security emergency and evacuation management issues associated with busy freeways.

The spokesman also noted that Mack’s letter was sent in response to a university request regarding funds for the interchange and the center.

Calls to the university were not returned.

When The Hill tried to reach Alcalde at Potomac Partners Thursday, a male voice answered Alcalde’s line on speakerphone. After he asked who was calling and why, he would not identify himself, repeating only that he was “one of Alcalde’s employees.”

 Jackie Kucinich contributed to this report.

Correction: The original version incorrectly reported that Pelosi has opposed a DoJ investigation. She never commented on a DoJ probe, saying only that the House ethics committee should look into the controversial earmark.