Earmarks defeat has groups scrambling
Westchester organizations are being forced to seek other means of funding new projects after Congress failed to approve a budget bill that would have paid for them through increasingly unpopular earmarks.
Among those groups is the Women”™s Enterprise Development Center, a nonprofit that trains women to start and run their own businesses, which was seeking funds to expand its programs.
The $1.2 trillion FY 2011 Omnibus Appropriations Act included $160,000 secured by U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey, D-Harrison, and sought by WEDC toward the opening of a Dutchess County satellite office. It would be the nonprofit”™s second outpost in the lower Hudson Valley, after its White Plains headquarters at 1133 Westchester Ave., and would have employed a manager who would spend three to four days a week there.
“It would have been a women”™s business center up there, with the training, the programs, workshops and counseling, business services like that,” WEDC Executive Director Anne M. Janiak said. “Now, we can”™t open it up because we don”™t have the funding.”
Janiak said the group had been approached by business leaders and groups she would not name about expanding into Dutchess, home to a small but growing number of women business owners who have participated in WEDC workshops.
“We”™ve been very interested in doing some programs up there in a more significant way. They were very eager for us to come up there and instead of having them reinvent the wheel, we said that we would work with them and they would have a satellite office,” Janiak said.
She said WEDC ”“ which operates on a $500,000 annual budget ”“ “will perhaps re-apply or seek other funds” this year for the second office, adding the defeat would likely delay the project into 2012.
Wherever that funding comes from, it is unlikely to be from Congress. Majority control of the House of Representatives has shifted to Republicans, many of whom took office expressing opposition to earmarks.
WEDC obtained its earmark last year from John Hall, the Democrat from Dover Plains unseated last November by current Rep. Nan Hayworth, R-Mount Kisco. The center will reach out to her and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, Janiak said.
The WEDC earmark was among 6,706 worth a total $8.3 billion in the omnibus bill, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, which advocates limits designed to reduce earmarking in future bills.
Among Westchester organizations with earmarks in the omnibus measure:
”¢ College of New Rochelle ”“ $250,000 toward educational technology and scientific equipment. Lowey obtained an earmark for the college, with U.S. Senate support from Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, D-NY.
”¢ Pace University Land Use Law Center (White Plains) ”“ $133,000 secured by Lowey toward training and technical assistance to local leaders responsible for land-use decisions.
”¢ Westchester County ”“ $750,000 toward rehabilitation of the Ashford Avenue bridge in Ardsley. U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel, D-Bronx, pursued funds, with Senate support from Schumer.
”¢ Nepperhan Community Center (Yonkers) ”“ $200,000 toward renovations that included refurbishing a basement for additional programs and services, and repairs to the roof and other sections of the building.
Jim Bostic, the community center”™s executive director, said the center sought funds for two years before winning the earmark this year from Engel.
“We serve about 15,000 to 18,000 children and family members a year, and we have a lot of programs and services,” Bostic said. “This was one of the things that we were heavily depending upon. It”™s very disappointing to find out that we were turned back.”