The Antiplanner’s friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense alerted me to the latest earmark scandal, the earmark from nowhere. Apparently, the transportation bill approved by Congress in 2005 included an earmark to widen Interstate 75 in Florida.
But in the bill signed by the president, that earmark was mysteriously deleted and replaced by an earmark to add an interchange to I-75 at Coconut Road in Lee County. By an extraordinary coincidence, Representative Don Young, who chaired the House Transportation Committee, had just given a fundraising speech in Florida where he raised $40,000, much of it from developers who owned land adjacent to I-75 at Coconut Road.
