Group proposes agency to review public works funding

As Congress struggles with how to limit earmarked projects, a nonpartisan group Monday proposed a federally funded agency be created to review public infrastructure funding requests and recommend which ones should be granted.

While admitting the proposal was "not uncontroversial," Everett Ehrlich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Commission on Public Infrastructure, said, "We need to change the way we fund infrastructure."

Working with state and local governments, the proposed National Investment Corporation would "act as the project evaluator and financing agency for all major infrastructure projects," according to a statement.

Rather than have members of Congress earmark funds for projects such as new or renovated highways, bridges and water systems, the nonpartisan NIC would evaluate each request and determine which ones should receive federal dollars.

Ehrlich predicted that would decrease the number of congressional earmarks for pet projects.

Ehrlich criticized earmarks as "the equivalent of a fiscal cookie jar." He added that by having politicians determine which projects "get moved up and down the list" instead of a more impartial body, the current process "doesn't always pick the best project."

Members of the commission also included Sens. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb.

At a news conference, Dodd said he was not against earmarks, which "members of Congress for the most part are proud of," but that too often undesirable projects slip through the approval process.

Dodd said he intends to introduce legislation to create the NIC, but that he did not know when that would happen.

Ehrlich said the agency would "not be outside the budget process," and that the money it allocated would be appropriated by Congress. Additionally, projects could be funded by using 50-year bonds.

The commission's proposals were the by-product of a two-year study on infrastructure investment, which was released last November.

Although the study was well under way before Hurricane Katrina last August, Ehrlich said revelations from the natural disaster regarding critical infrastructure "put a fire under what we're talking about."