An eight person holding company that operates a small marina in Sonoma County will receive $20m from the federal government to start a ferry service to San Francisco and Oakland.

The San Franciso Chronicle reports that the project is supported primarily by … the owner of the marina. The Bay Area Water Transit Authority, the public agency charged with improving and coordinating Bay Area ferrys, once looked at adding service out of Port Sonoma Marina, near Novato, didn’t pursue it because of environmental concerns, and was surprised to hear of the grant.

This Google satellite view shows Port Sonoma Marina is a small, mostly empty facility. But that didn’t stop Congress.

How did this down-at-the-heels marina get showered with $20m?

Lobbying!

Toward the goal, (owner’s representative J.T.) Wick — a onetime congressional intern — hired a lobbyist and made no less than a half-dozen trips himself to Washington, D.C., over the past year and a half looking for support.

They had meetings with North Bay Democrat Lynn Woolsey and with ranking members and leaders of both the House and Senate transportation committees.

Wick said the one thing that worked was “being there constantly.”

It probably didn’t hurt that Berg also contributed $4,000 to Woolsey’s campaign coffers in 2003-2004, plus $2,000 more to U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (who was part of the transportation conference committee that approved the final funding package), and there were donations to the Democratic Congressional Committee as well.

Still, when the bill passed, even Wick was surprised to learn that they got every dime they had asked for.

“We figured we were going to be back (in Washington) next year,” Wick said. “You never know until it’s done.”

Woolsey confirmed Tuesday that she carried the funding proposal — but called it a “late request” that didn’t actually compete with any of the priorities she had set for her district, including money to widen Highway 101.

Reflecting what a porkfest the transportation bill was:

“We didn’t even know we had that in there when we made our press release” announcing $58 million for other North Bay transit projects, (Woolsey) said.

Absurd.

Technorati Tags: Barbara Boxer, California, government waste, politics, pork spending, San Francisco

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This environmental organization’s website discusses the fight over Port Sonoma ferry service as of 2002.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005 at 5:01 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Your Tax Dollars In Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.