Earmarked money may be no good

By Denice Thibodeau

Published: January 5, 2009

The earmarks for projects in Southside announced last week by former Congressman Virgil Goode have expired and will not be coming through, according to Jessica Barba, U.S. Rep.-elect Tom Perriello’s communications director.

Barba said the individual bills in the Conference Report Package, also known as an omnibus bill, passed, but the entire package itself had not been approved before the 110th Congress expired. The earmarks were part of the package.

“When Congress expired, so did the omnibus bill, because no president had signed it into law,” Barba said. “That bill is dead.”

Barba said Perriello already has told his district director to make appointments with each organization in the 5th District that was told it would receive federal earmarked dollars. In Danville, those organizations are the city of Danville, Danville Community College, the Institute for Advanced Learning & Research and the Future of the Piedmont Foundation.

“Meeting with those people is a high priority with Tom,” Barba said, adding that Perriello will want to be fully briefed on the projects so he will know exactly what they hope to accomplish.

“We’re going to fight very hard to get projects that will put Southside on the road to economic survival,” she said.

Linwood Wright, chairman of the Future of the Piedmont Foundation, said he understood that the omnibus had cleared subcommittee and the Appropriations Committee, but still had not been passed by the full House and Senate.

“Why in the world would they have wasted the time and effort to take it that far, and not complete it?” Wright said. “It’s not money I would count on at this point in time.”

Julie Brown, director of Academic and Outreach Programs at the Institute, said she had heard the earmarks for Institute projects might not come through.

She said the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Mobile Learning project the earmarked money would have helped fund would have opened doors to the future for local students.

Researchers would have been able to visit students in their classrooms and let them know how important STEM skills are for finding good-paying jobs in the future, and could show them some of those jobs are available in Southside.

“We heard today that they (earmarks) could potentially get thrown out,” Brown said. “We’re just holding our breath.”

A call to Goode was not immediately returned Monday.

Contact Denice Thibodeau at or (434) 791-7985.