Enlarge By Garrett Hubbard, USA TODAY Civil engineers Harry Smeltzer Sr. and Will Lynes, of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, inspect Heth's Run Bridge in Pittsburgh. The bridge was built in 1914. An $11 million planned upgrade could make use of "orphan earmark" funds that are held up on other projects. 'ORPHAN' EARMARKS 'ORPHAN' EARMARKS WASHINGTON  Almost 13 years ago, Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., directed $375,000 in federal funding "to improve State Road 31" in Columbus , Ind., a city at the edge of his district. The McIntosh "earmark" seemed routine at the time, like almost 2,000 other congressional pet projects that lawmakers inserted into the 1998 highway bill. But there was a problem: "There is no State Road 31 that travels through Columbus, only U.S. 31," says Will Wingfield, a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Transportation. The error hurt all of Indiana and has wrapped the earmark in red tape to this day. The money not only remains unspent, but because Congress counts money earmarked for highway projects against a state's share of federal gas tax revenue, the amount of the earmark reduced what Indiana would have received in federal funding — almost dollar for dollar. VIDEO: Orphan earmarks delay road improvements McIntosh's botched attempt at earmarking is one of more than 7,374 congressionally directed highway projects in which at least some money that lawmakers set aside remains unspent, a USA TODAY analysis of state and federal records shows. In at least 3,649 of those earmarks, not a single dollar has gone toward its intended purpose, sometimes because of simple, sloppy mistakes, USA TODAY found. The problem is so pervasive that almost 1 in 3 highway dollars earmarked since 1991 — about $13 billion — remains unspent, federal data show. "We call them orphan earmarks," says Michael Covington of the South Carolina Department of Transportation. "They don't have a home." The federal government treats an unspent earmark like an undated check that could be cashed at any time. It affects the federal budget only if it's cashed. Nevertheless, because lawmakers inserted some of the earmarks into particular sections of transportation bills, many of the orphan earmarks also count against a state's share of federal highway funds and have taken billions of dollars away from state transportation departments across the nation. During the past 20 years, orphan earmarks reduced the amount of money that states would have received in federal highway funding by about $7.5 billion, USA TODAY found. That's $7.5 billion that states could have used to replace obsolete bridges, repair aging roads and bring jobs to rural areas. Pennsylvania, already coping with a transportation funding crisis, lost out on $392 million. New York, struggling with the worst budget deficit in its history, lost $607 million. California, forced to consider a bailout from the federal government, could have had $568 million more for transportation had it not been for orphan earmarks. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, says that money would go a long way toward plugging his state's shortage of transportation funding. "It shows you what's wrong with the earmark system," he says. Critics say the numbers show that many earmarks were never intended to fund viable projects. "Once a member puts out a press release, cuts a ribbon and does a victory lap, it's forgotten," says Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a leading crusader against earmarks. "Nobody cares what happens after that." Flake and his GOP colleagues in the House voted to ban earmarks shortly after winning a majority in November. House GOP leader John Boehner called the earmarking process "a symbol of a dysfunctional Congress" and the "fuel line for the culture of spending that has dominated Washington for too long." Even so, earmarks remain popular on the other side of the Capitol. Last month, the Democrat-controlled Senate introduced, and then withdrew, a spending measure that included 425 highway earmarks worth a total of $420 million. Many of those earmarks had Republican sponsors. An orphaned Obama earmark Earmarks become orphaned for many reasons: Sometimes, earmarks are meant for projects that later get shelved — such as $29 million set aside in 1998 for a highway interchange in Virginia. Projects might get mired in red tape, and some earmarks don't provide enough money or come too late to help. Other earmarked money may be spent years or even decades after it is set aside. Some orphan earmarks are leftovers from long-completed projects. In 1991, for example, Congress authorized $58.1 million "for various transportation improvements in connection with the 1996 Olympics" in Atlanta. The city has $2.7 million left that, by law, could be spent only on an event that ended more than 14 years ago. In other cases, a lawmaker's gaffe can turn an earmark into an orphan. In 2005, then-senator Barack Obama, D-Ill., earmarked $1 million for a highway underpass in Franklin Park, a Chicago suburb. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., President Obama's future chief of staff, anted up another $928,000 earmark in the same bill. "Securing this funding for the Grand Avenue Underpass is the result of the Illinois delegation working together in a bipartisan manner to put the interests of the people of Illinois first," Obama said in a 2005 news release. The problem: State and local governments already had started building the underpass with other funding before the lawmakers inserted their earmarks. "Earmarks cannot be used after a project has already been approved, and therefore earmarked funds could not be used on the underpass project," explains Olivia Alair, press secretary for the U.S. Department of Transportation. Worse, rather than bring additional money to Illinois, the Obama and Emanuel earmarks wound up taking it away. Their $1.9 million in earmarks came out of the Illinois share of federal highway funding, instead of providing "much-needed and long overdue investments in transportation in Illinois," as Obama said in his press release. "By definition of where this money comes from, it was taking away money from another project for that year," says Chris Holt, the Illinois road engineer who oversaw the project. White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage declined to comment on the Obama earmark. Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Emanuel's campaign for mayor of Chicago, says Emanuel did get $500,000 for the underpass project through a separate earmark in 2004. That earmark, LaBolt says, "allowed construction to move forward and the project to be completed." Obama's proposed 2011 budget would cancel $263 million in orphan earmarks that were more than 20 years old. Earmarks outlive sponsors Fixing an orphan earmark is difficult, too. A sitting member of Congress can sometimes correct a typographical error with a letter to the Department of Transportation clarifying his or her intent — or, for bigger problems, insert a new project into a technical corrections bill. But once the earmark sponsor leaves Congress, fixing the problem is almost impossible. In the case of the Indiana highway, McIntosh left office in 2001 — with the botched earmark still a matter of law. McIntosh, now a Capitol Hill lobbyist, did not return calls seeking comment. Transportation spokeswoman Alair says the Columbus road improvement project "advanced with state and local funds" but that the federal government has no record of the state seeking to use the McIntosh earmark. To date, it remains an orphan. Efforts to get Congress to free up the orphan earmarks have proved fruitless, as former U.S. Transportation secretary Mary Peters will attest. "We said to Congress, 'Give us the authority to pull this money back in and redistribute it,' " she says. "And they said no." Because highway earmarks hide their true cost — they take money away from a state's share of highway funds — the system is "the enemy of transparency," she says. "It's this damn complicated on purpose. People who know how to play inside baseball on this work the system. Sometimes, orphan earmarks outlive their sponsors. In 1998, Rep. Herb Bateman, R-Va., secured $29 million for the Bland Boulevard interchange in Newport News. The diamond-shaped interchange would have connected Interstate 64 more directly to the Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport. But after the money was earmarked, the cost of the project skyrocketed. "We had never seen an interchange cost $110 million," says Rich Clifton, project manager for the Virginia Department of Transportation. "That was blowing our minds." Clifton said the Federal Highway Administration insisted on design conditions that made the project too costly. DOT's Alair said the federal government approved the project but the state gave up on it. "For the last half-dozen years, we've given up on them changing their convoluted way of doing things," Newport News City Manager Neil Morgan says. "At this point we would just like to be able to take the money that was committed to transportation needs in Hampton Roads, and use it here." No luck. Bateman died in 2000, and efforts by local members of Congress to change the orphan earmark have been blocked in the Senate, Morgan says. Virginia has lost as much as $191 million to orphan earmarks, according to data from the Sunlight Foundation, a non-partisan watchdog group. Yet the state has such a backlog of transportation needs that Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, proposed a $4 billion construction plan last month financed mostly with new debt. States increasingly concerned Highway spending bills are passed by Congress and administered by the Federal Highway Administration. But the projects are planned and built by states, so federal highway officials are unable to give a complete accounting of the status of unspent earmarks. The highway administration also refused a Freedom of Information Act request for a detailed accounting of earmarked funds. USA TODAY's data come from the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University in New York, which obtained records from 44 states and the District of Columbia. Six other states — Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, New Jersey, North Dakota and Virginia — either refused requests for data or said they didn't have the records. With state budgets squeezed and the economy in slow recovery, states are increasingly vocal about having money tied up in projects that many never wanted in the first place. They say the money could be better used for shovel-ready projects that would create jobs, replace crumbling bridges and roads, and make highways safer. Rendell, the Pennsylvania governor, offers this fictional example: "What's wrong with the earmark system is a congressman, meaning well, will get $6 million for the design of a project. And he'll go back home and have a press conference and say, 'I got $6 million to design … the Harper Valley Expressway.' And everyone cheers. Well, the problem is, the Harper Valley Expressway costs $540 million to build." "So that money never gets spent," Rendell says. "Most of this money is doing nobody any good." Last May, Rendell listed 449 bridges and 806 miles of road projects in Pennsylvania that are unfunded because of what he calls a "transportation funding crisis." Among them: the 96-year-old Heth's Run Bridge near the Pittsburgh Zoo. It's crumbling below the street as school buses and 13,000 other vehicles travel above each day. It's one of 5,646 bridges that the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation considers "structurally deficient." "That hurts," says Chris Sybo, who owns Trio Trucking, a heavy-equipment hauling business near the bridge. His trucks can't cross Heth's Run — or dozens of other bridges in the Pittsburgh area — because of weight limits. As a result, he pays more for everything from fuel to insurance. He has considered moving his business out of Pittsburgh. "I think it's a disgrace that, with the economy the way it is right now, that since the money is already appropriated, these (projects) are sitting idle," Sybo says. Push for accountability stifled Some earmarked money has been sitting idle for decades. Data supplied by states show four orphan earmarks totaling $9.9 million remain unspent from the 1987 transportation bill. By 1998, Congress moved to treat earmarks in transportation bills differently from other earmarks, deciding that most of the 1,854 highway earmarks in that year's transportation bill be counted against a state's federal highway money allocations. The same process applied to the 2005 transportation bill and most of its 5,611 earmarks. These earmarks don't bring new money to the state but simply allow members of Congress — and not the states themselves — to decide how states spend federal highway money. For some congressmen, bypassing the state bureaucracy is the whole purpose of the earmark. "Member-designated projects play an important role in the federal-aid highway program," Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., said during one House floor debate on earmarks last year. "They provide constituents with a chance to weigh in directly with their elected officials on their community priorities, and allow members an opportunity to support transportation safety and mobility improvements that may be overlooked by the state department of transportation." "Yet," Oberstar continued, "it is also necessary to use a common-sense approach to dealing with projects that are complete or no longer viable." Oberstar, who was chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, was supporting a bill that would have canceled more than $700 million in orphan earmarks from 1987 on. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Betsy Markey, D-Colo., also would have required the secretary of Transportation to give an annual accounting of unspent earmarks to Congress. It passed the House, 394-23, and died in the Senate. The lawmakers who championed it, Oberstar and Markey, lost their seats in the November elections. Podkul was a fellow at the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more