By Carl Weiser
Enquirer Washington Bureau

Joe Utasi, president of Accu-Counter, displays the "black box" device his Crestview Hills company makes to record data when a gun is fired. Federal funds could help land a Pentagon contract. (Patrick Reddy photo) | ZOOM |

WASHINGTON - Welcome to new Porkopolis.

Greater Cincinnati's congressional delegation added more than $150 million for local projects to this year's federal budget - pork to critics, but delicious to those receiving it.

Examples:

• A Northern Kentucky company is getting $1.5 million, courtesy of Sen. Mitch McConnell.

• The Mill Creek is getting a speeded up Army Corps of Engineers study and $3.9 million to do it, courtesy of Reps. Rob Portman and Steve Chabot.

• Newport is getting a submarine, thanks to Sen. Jim Bunning.

• Vine Street will be spruced up near the Cincinnati Zoo, and The Banks project along Cincinnati's Ohio River shoreline is getting $3.5 million for a new garage, courtesy of Sen. Mike DeWine.

The money, to be delivered over the next year, is coming from earmarks, a line or paragraph a member of Congress adds to a spending bill.

The $150 million is a fraction of the $2.3 trillion federal budget. In fact, the earmarks are a portion of the money flowing to the Tristate. Washington sent $6.3 billion to Hamilton County alone last year in Social Security checks, Medicare and Medicaid subsidies, and other programs.

Earmarks have skyrocketed in recent years. Last year, a record 9,362 earmarks cost taxpayers $22.5 billion, according to Citizens Against Government Waste.

The problem, Carpenter said, is they mostly benefit places with a member in leadership or on the Senate or House appropriations committees. Like Cincinnati.

Leadership's influence

The Tristate's delegation includes the No. 2 Republican in the Senate (McConnell of Kentucky), the chairman of the House Republican leadership (Portman of Ohio), and a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee (DeWine of Ohio).

"Senator DeWine was elected to the Senate to represent the people of Ohio, and he feels that as a member of the appropriations committee, he's well positioned to ensure that Ohioans get back from the government what they put in," said his spokeswoman, Amanda Flaig.

Actually, the Cincinnati delegation is restrained in seeking earmarks. Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, refuses to ask for any. Citizens ranks Chabot as one of its "taxpayer heroes" for his anti-pork votes. Ohio ranked 41st in per-capita pork last year; Kentucky, 16th.

According to the nonprofit Tax Foundation, Ohio gets back about $1.03 for every tax dollar sent to Washington. Kentucky gets $1.50 and Indiana $1. New Mexico, with its energy labs, gets the most: $2.37.

An earmark for a "weapons shot counter" could be the break Accu-Counter Technologies in Crestview Hills has been waiting for.

The company makes a "black box" for guns that stores the data on every shot fired - the date, the rate, the time of every shot down to a thousandth of a second.

Accu-Counter isn't guaranteed a Pentagon contract, but owners are optimistic. The four-person company manufactures the device at a factory in Evendale.

Humvees to fuses

When the Pentagon requested 747 armored Humvees in its Iraq spending bill, DeWine upped it to 1,065. Fairfield's O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt gets $75,500 for every Humvee it armors, according to Don Jarosz, spokesman for the Army's Tank Automotive Command. So that change was worth $24 million to the company.

A Clermont County company, KDI Precision Products, received an earmark to build fuses used to initiate detonation of a weapon.

GE Aircraft Engines in Evendale got help from DeWine, who added two lines to the defense spending bill worth $66.8 million to help GE Aircraft Engines stay on schedule in developing an engine for the Joint Strike Fighter plane.

The Banks riverfront project in Cincinnati got $3.5 million for an intermodal center, mostly a two-story parking garage.

"This is a key step in the financial plan for the build-out of The Banks," said Tim Sharp, president of the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority.

A congressional nudge

Sometimes an earmark's importance isn't money.

Portman added a paragraph to one spending bill ordering the Army Corps of Engineers to finish an overdue report on preventing flooding along Mill Creek's 28 miles. Portman gave the corps 15 months.

Bunning added a paragraph to a defense spending bill reserving a submarine, the USS Narwhal, for the Newport-based National Submarine Science Discovery Center.

The delegation doesn't get all the earmarks members request. Portman and Chabot sought some homeland security money for Cincinnati, including $2.8 million for portable decontamination showers. But no earmarks were allowed on the homeland security spending bill.

E-mail cweiser@gns.gannett.com