The North Country gets hundreds of millions of dollars each year in federal funding to pays for infrastructure like roads and bridges, upgrades to water and sewer systems, and other projects. Federal lawmakers who represent the district help to secure that funding.
This week, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik said she helped secure $1.8 million for a water project in Massena, but critics have pushed back, since Stefanik voted against the broader spending bill that will fund $4.5 million of the $9 million project in Massena. Grant Reeher, director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute and political science professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship, explains how funding is allocated and who gets to take credit for it.
EMILY RUSSELL: How important is the advocacy of lawmakers like Congresswoman Elise Stefanik or Senators Chuck Schumer or Kirsten Gillibrand for securing funding for a district like the North Country for specific local projects?
GRANT REEHER: Well, it's very important. Those are the folks that have the most powerful and most influential voices in the budget-making process from the standpoint of what happens in the North Country. So you see a great incentive for all three of those folks to want to be able to direct money there, Gillibrand and Schumer because they're representing the entire state and Elise Stefanik because this is her particular district. And so not only is it important for the district that these folks are advocating for that, but they perceive it as very important to them politically that they're able to deliver.
RUSSELL: So Congresswoman Stefanik has come forward this week announcing that she's secured $1.8 million for a water project in the town of Messina. And there is a record of that in the appropriations list from Congress, but there's a bit more to the story which is that $4.5 million of additional money for that project came from the Inflation Reduction Act, which Stefanik voted against and there's even more money from a loan. So when a member of Congress comes forward and claims to take credit for some of that funding, how does it work when it turns out they voted against some of the funding that will come for a project like this one?
REEHER: Yeah. That's that's the rub in a lot of these [earmarks] and it's an interesting question. So on the face of it, it seems to be a contradiction. How can you try to claim credit for bringing a source of money into the district when you were not in favor of the policy that made this possible in the first place? But if we think deeper about it, I think it may be less of a contradiction.
I think the justification would be, I don't know whether Congressperson Stefanik is going to say this, but the justification usually goes well, 'Okay, I was against this as a general policy, but if this is the policy that the country is going to live under, then I want my district to benefit from that as much as possible,' and so that makes perfect sense. I don't have to be for this as national policy in order to be advocating, 'Okay now that we have set aside a pot of money for the country, I want my district to get its fair share or hopefully more than its fair share of that money coming to the people that I represent,' so that, I think, is probably the way that they think about it and they see it.
RUSSELL: Would this kind of money, like $1.8 million for a water project in Massena, would it come to this district without advocacy from someone like Congresswoman Stefanik?
REEHER: Well, that's a question. I can't answer because I'd have to know what all of the other [earmarks] are that are being considered. I would say the answer is probably not. Maybe the way to think about it is if it was someone other than Elise Stefanik, would they also be advocating for it? They're the answer I think is probably yes. Would they be as effective as she is given her ranking in the house? Probably not and so voters have to weigh all those things.