Posted on 03/19/2009 5:52:07 AM PDT by TornadoAlley3
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu said Wednesday that she will try to rescind $190,000 she recently secured in the federal budget for a nonprofit New Orleans organization incorporated by her brother.
Landrieu was responding to an article published Wednesday in The New York Times, which reported that the money went to the Lake Mary Community Center. Her brother, Martin, helped incorporate the organization to convert an abandoned synagogue in 2007.
The project never came to fruition because the group couldn’t secure the necessary private funding. Landrieu had contacted her brother about the center but was unaware that, as a lawyer, he had volunteered to help the group form, she said.
Her brother was the former president of the Lakeview Civic Improvement Association in the neighborhood, where the project was to be built.
“I contacted him because I knew he would know about the project,” Landrieu said. “The request came up from the community.”
The proposal came to Landrieu’s office through Catholic Charities, she said.
“I was aggressively looking for projects like this, not only in the city but in the region,” Landrieu said.
Martin Landrieu said Wednesday that he didn’t know that the organization was seeking money through the senator’s office until after the fact. Landrieu said he never lobbied his sister on the project.
“Never once did I do that,” he said. “This is one project of many recovery projects.”
The proposal was part of a regional plan for the area compiled by community groups, he said. Asked if his relationship with his senator gave his organization more preference than another project, Landrieu said: “Certainly not.”
The Landrieus said the project was initiated by Margaret Dubuisson of Catholic Charities in New Orleans. Dubuisson did not return calls for comment on Wednesday. An aide said she was not in the office on Wednesday.
U.S. Senate ethic rules prohibit senators from seeking funding that would financially benefit themselves or a family members. The rule applies to financial gains. The agency in Landrieu’s earmark was a non-profit.
Special project funding in the budget are known as “earmarks” and have become very controversial because for their inclusion in legislators’ states or districts. Landrieu was recently ranked second in the Senate for securing earmarks worth $332 million for 177 projects, according to the government watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.
Landrieu has supported earmarks, saying members of Congress know more about projects in their district than federal bureaucrats.
Steve Ellis, vice president of the taxpayer group, said Wednesday that Landrieu not knowing her brother’s connection to the community center is an example of legislators not vetting their earmarks.
“It looks a little odd for a senator sending an earmark to an organization her brother was heavily involved with and a project that was defunct,” Ellis said. “I’m not saying that there is anything untoward but the example undercuts the argument.”
Landrieu stood by the earmark process and said the project was viable when she secured the money. She would have backed the project anyway had she known of her brother’s efforts to incorporate the group, Landrieu said.
“It was a very interesting project and worthy,” Landrieu said. “I believe in earmarks and directed earmarks to good worthy projects.”
Landrieu said because the project will not come to fruition, she will ask that the money be used for another proposal.
“I will just try to redirect it to some other worthy cause in Louisiana,” she said.
She got caught and now is doing her “Dancing With the Stars” routine to cover up her culpability. This is what the Landrieu clan has been doing for years.
Is there one of them who is not a crook and does not lie?
Perhaps her sister?
On Par with Chicago Politics.
Mary, what’s $190,000 in today’s Washington? Your fellow Democrats are giving away the store to their favorite constituencies.
Looks like the senator is not affiliated with a political party. Perhaps the missing “D” was an oversight.
Just More Inbred Porkulus Slop !
The one of these “civic improvement charities” I’ve know about the inside workings of was a pure tax dodge and scam. The guys that set it up and put their wives in charge would donate an amount, get local, state and federal matching funds. Then all the materials purchase orders and construction & service contracts would go to companies they owned.
They got to write off their “charitable donation” and recycle all the cash back to themselves...
I realize this is a throw-away line while she is desperately tap dancing, but I keep hearing this argument from Dems. If this is so, why do we have federal bureaucrats?
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