Every spring, as Congress works on its annual budget bill, cities, counties, universities, transportation districts and private interest groups ask for money.
This year, Wyden and Merkley will post on their Web sites the requests that make the first cut and get sent on to appropriations subcommittees for consideration.
Site visitors will have the opportunity to comment on the proposals.
Information about the requests will start going up on the Web sites beginning in early March and running through late April, said Tom Towslee, a Wyden spokesman.
The move is part of an effort to make government more transparent, the senators said in a news release.
“We are now experiencing a very difficult economic stretch where tax dollars are extremely scarce at the very time that they are desperately needed to stimulate and stabilize the economy,” Wyden said.
The requests in question aren’t for the stimulus package recently passed by the House and under consideration in the Senate but part of the annual appropriations budget.
Eugene and Springfield are among the local governments that request federal funds, but they do it as part of a broader group, United Front, that includes Lane County, Cottage Grove, Coburg, the Springfield School District, Lane Transit District and Willamalane Park and Recreation District, said Brenda Wilson, intergovernmental relations manager for Eugene.
The group decides in advance what to ask for to keep from making conflicting requests.
“We vet them out at the regional level first,” she said.
United Front has successfully lobbied for $200 million over the past 20 years for projects such as LTD’s EmX bus line between Eugene and Springfield.
They don’t always get what they ask for, Wilson said.
“Last year, nothing got funding,” she said. The deadline for requesting money this year is Feb. 23.
Separately from United Front, many other Oregon-based entities lobby the senators for appropriations.
While the comments that people post on the Web won’t translate into a popularity contest for specific earmarks, neither are they an idle exercise, said Towslee.
“We’ll get a pretty good sense of how people feel about these and it’ll give us some guidance,” he said.
Wyden can be found online at Wyden.senate.gov, and Merkley is at Merkley.senate.gov.
