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Maryland outmuscles Texas on federal aid for military projects
Posted on 11/05/2011 by Gary Martin
Disparity over the amount of federal aid doled out to Maryland and Texas to relieve traffic congestion due to base realignment and closure actions is raising a few eyebrows.
Maryland will receive $270 million to ease gridlock and improve traffic around two military hospitals consolidated under BRAC.
Texas sought $125 million for improvements around the San Antonio Military Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, but will get only $25 million.
The stark differences in the amounts going for improvements around military hospitals in Maryland and in Texas raised questions about the clout of the Texas congressional delegation for Nelson Wolff, the Bexar County judge.
“There has been a sea change in the last few years,” said Wolff, who has watched as federal spending come to a trickle for local projects.
Wolff has cajoled and derided local lawmakers for their efforts to tack down federal help for environmental restoration of the San Antonio River south of downtown, the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park and SAMMC.
But Wolff said the congressional delegation has sometimes been a reluctant partner.
“They are all up there with the mantra that they want to cut spending,” Wolff said. “They are missing in action. That’s just their philosophy.”
And it has become a political reality in the new era of deficits, the debt ceiling and austerity plans.
Wolff hails Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, for her continued efforts to direct federal spending to projects under federal supervision.
The Army Corps of Engineers is heading the San Antonio River restoration, the Interior Department would oversee land acquisition and improvements at the Missions, and the Pentagon ordered the military hospital consolidation at Fort Sam Houston.
Hutchison, who long championed those projects and brought back federal funds, was pummeled in her 2010 Republican primary race to unseat Gov. Rick Perry, who tagged her as a liberal spendthrift and the queen of pork-barrel spending.
Wolff said Hutchison’s defeat had a chilling effect on other members of the Texas congressional delegation.
It also may have had consequences for the state, which was outmaneuvered by Maryland in recent requests for Pentagon help with infrastructure projects due to BRAC decisions.
A $300 million pot of money made available by the Pentagon’s Office of Economic Adjustment to help states grapple with unintended problems created by BRAC.
In the end, it was split between three states.
Maryland got $278 million, Texas received $25 million and Washington state got $7 million for improvements around Madigan Army Medical Center.
Read the rest of the story here.