Russ Steele
Pat Butler: Doolittle steps up campaign for re-election, February 25, 2006
Writing in an earlier post, I was at the meeting with city and transportation officials and have a different view on the outcome than Pat.
Before it was over, I would spend nearly two hours with the congressman, who later would meet with local officials and then pledge to help find federal funds for the Dorsey Drive interchange project. Earlier in the day, he also said he would support trying to find money for the busy and dangerous Highway 49.
I went over my notes of the meeting with local officials and cannot find any promise the Congressman made to find federal funds for the Dorsey Drive interchange or SR- 49. The focus of the discussion was on how he could help Nevada County find state and local funds, and suggested we try new approaches. Not once did he mention we should hire a lobbyist, which is the old way. However, he did suggest we talk to government officials in Placer County to see show they secured funds for their projects. This may have been a veiled reference to lobbying, but it was not clearly stated.
I was not at the Union meeting where lobbying was discussed, so we have to take Pat at his word.
Of course, any discussion about pursuing federal funds eventually takes us to the hot-button issue of lobbyists, which the congressman insists are an important part of the equasion [sic] in Washington, D.C. “It’s the way it is. I wish it weren’t,” he said while sitting in our small conference room along with his wife, the aide and reporter Josh Singer.
According to Doolittle, lobbyists are important partners as funding requests work their way through House and Senate committees, where much of the real work is done.
“A lobbyist sends a signal to the committees that this is a serious effort,” he said. “If Nevada County really wants to do something about Highway 49, they need to help me help them.”
The focus in the meeting with local officials was on becoming a self-help county, by generating local funds that could be used for matching funds for state grants. I did not hear one mention of hiring a lobbyist. He did ask if local business were willing to spend money for ad campaigns to shape public opinion on transportation issues.
The 55-year-old bristled when asked about a story in last Sunday’s Sacramento Bee that essentially called the Auburn Dam project a boondoggle that will never be built although $400 million has already been spent on it. “I thought the Bee story was outrageous,” he said. “It only quoted environmentalists.”
Doolitte, who has pursued the project for nearly two decades, recently got $1 million in federal funds to continue studying the project. He said the dam, which the Bee estimated would cost $3 to $5 billion to build, would eventually pay for itself, provide flood control, add needed water storage, generate more power and offer recreational opportunities.
I also thought the Sacramento Bee’s Auburn Dam story was too one
sided, but that is what we expect from the Bee. Normally, I do not buy
the Bee, but my children were visiting and they like to look at the
sports pages.
As we come out of the Little Ice Age and the Earth warms, the environmentalist are alarmed the Sierra snow pack will decline, creating water shortages. It happened in the 1100 hundreds when the Sierra experienced a 27 year drought. Therefore, we should be planning for living on a warmer Earth. If most of the Sierra moisture is going to fall as rain as the environmentalist claim, then we should be building dams like the Auburn Dam to catch that run off. Without the snow pack, we are going to need some critical water storage. It seems to me the Auburn dam would be a good place to start.
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