Welcome to Earmark Watch!

Here's your chance to dig into earmarks. Our earmark tool can help you find out if members of Congress are using earmarks to meet pressing needs or pass out political favors.

To join in this effort, create an account or sign in

“Classified Amount to Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) for Center for Innovative Geospatial Technology”

Sponsor: Rep. Lewis (R-CA)  

(10 Comments)

Recipient Web Site:  Recipient Address:  ^(Flag) Recipient address as provided by Sponsor(s): (courtesy of Taxpayers for Common Sense) Short Description of Recipient Organization:  Are Top Personnel Listed on the Site?  Is the Project Mentioned on the Site?  Does the Recipient have Federal Contracts?  Link to the Recipient's Federal Contracts (Fedspending.org):  Does the Recipient have Federal Grants?  Link to the Recipient's Federal Grants (Fedspending.org):  Have employees of the recipient collectively contributed more than $20,000 to candidates for federal office during the current and last election cycle?:  Does a sponsoring member take credit?  Did the recipient hire federal lobbyists?  URL of Lobbying Data from OpenSecrets  Research contributed by:

yourleaders_org wrote:

Why is the amount classified?

posted October 2, 2007 at 7:26 p.m.

Bill_Allison wrote:

That's a good question. There's another geospatial project -- mapping China, I think -- that's also classified. Here's that earmark:

http://www.earmarkwatch.org/earmark/40817/

posted October 3, 2007 at 10:37 a.m.

aphilp wrote:

http://www.esri.com/cigt/index.html

posted October 4, 2007 at 2:05 a.m.

Bill_Allison wrote:

About classified earmarks: I should add that a number of Defense earmarks are classified as to the amount, and I imagine some are left out of the budget altogether (if I'm not mistaken, Randy "Duke" Cunningham steered "classified" earmarks to MZM Corp. to hide even from his fellow committee members what he was up to)>

posted October 4, 2007 at 10:38 a.m.

kbal11 wrote:

Something interesting I noticed... out of $72 million in federal contracts in 2006, $40 million of them were not competed. You can see that at the first fedspending link up above.

posted October 19, 2007 at 1:09 a.m.

kbal11 wrote:

Need to search for 'Environmental Systems Research Institute' not ESRI to get it to show up in lobbying database. I missed this the first time around

Of note: hired Copeland, Lowery & Jacquez every year 2000-2006. Started hiring Innovative Federal Strategies as well in 2006.

posted October 19, 2007 at 10:46 p.m.

mschim83 wrote:

There is no reason an earmark should ever be classified.

posted November 2, 2007 at 12:23 p.m.

chromantix wrote:

mschim83 wrote:
"There is no reason an earmark should ever be classified."

Agreed. If this is a classified project, the funds for it should be vetted and processed through the standard defense budgeting mechanism, not an earmark.

Nothing wrong with classifying amounts required to fund certain gov/mil projects, but this is the wrong way to go about it.

posted November 16, 2007 at 1:57 a.m.

Sandy wrote:

A legitimate good cause or just another way to hide spending.

posted January 24, 2008 at 1:10 a.m.

MizJesster wrote:

Here's yet another with one "classified amount":
http://earmarkwatch.org/earmark/41933/

posted February 13, 2008 at 2:20 a.m.