Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) secured a $245,000 earmark in 2008 and another for $570,000 in 2009 to widen West Vista Way, in Vista, Calif. The congestion-relief project is less than a mile from a medical building that Issa purchased for $16.6 million in 2009 and it is the main road motorists use to get to the facility. Issa’s office said the congressman sold the property on Jan. 19, 2012, for $15 million. Several media sources have run stories about these earmarks, including a March 30, 2011, report by the Center for American Progress and on Aug. 14, 2011, in the New York Times.
See Darrell Issa’s earmark here
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See earmarks near lawmakers’ property
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Public projects, private interests
Thirty-three members of Congress have steered more than $300 million in earmarks and other spending provisions to dozens of public projects that are next to or near the lawmakers’ own property, according to a Washington Post investigation. Under the ethics rules Congress has written for itself, this is both legal and undisclosed.
In the first review of its kind, The Post analyzed public records on the holdings of all 535 members and compared them with earmarks members had sought for pet projects, most of them since 2008. The process uncovered appropriations for work in close proximity to commercial and residential real estate owned by the lawmakers or their family members. The review also found 16 lawmakers who sent tax dollars to companies, colleges or community programs where their spouses, children or parents work as salaried employees or serve on boards.
More from Capitol Assets:
Capitol Assets: A Washington Post investigation
Interactive: Mapping the earmarks
Congressional earmarks sometimes used to fund projects near lawmakers properties
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