The Fiscal Year 2022 Omnibus spending bill marked the return of earmarks after a decade-plus hiatus. This return of earmarks—err, Community Project Funding—also marks a return to lawmakers using their power to circumvent existing rules for directing taxpayer dollars. We’re not saying powerful lawmakers restrained from putting their fingers on the fiscal scales during the earmark moratorium, just that it wasn’t hyper-targeted to pet projects. We can debate the merits of earmarks. But we should all be able to agree earmarks shouldn’t be used to create two separate funding systems – one for the politically powerful and another for the rest of us.

Leaving aside whether you believe earmarks are inherently wasteful or the greatest thing since sliced bread, we should all agree that earmarks do not belong in certain programs. This includes programs that use competitive, merit-based, or formula criteria for awarding funds. The use of clear, consistent, fact-based criteria provides an even playing field for communities as they compete for tax dollars. Lawmakers can, and do, adjust the metrics and criteria in those programs to achieve intended results. But that’s done beforehand, in the open, and if there are needed adjustments to those metrics and criteria in the future, that is done in the same open legislative process. Heck, this is how funding should be awarded in most programs to be the most equitable and achieve intended results.

But there are no such restrictions with earmarking. Take the BRIC program – Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities. Through BRIC, communities can receive federal dollars to reduce their risk to future natural disasters. It is the successor program to the Pre-Disaster Mitigation program at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), but it is much better funded. That’s because FEMA can set aside up to six percent of the Disaster Supplemental appropriations to fund the program. And since the nation spends a lot of money on disasters, there’s a lot of cash available. Yet not nearly enough to meet demand, so every year some projects – even worthy ones – are turned aside. Others are rejected because they don’t make the grade under the established rules for awarding funding.

Enter earmarks.

In the Omnibus, lawmakers single out 68 specific projects totaling $154 million for funding through BRIC. But in reality, these projects are jumping the line. As we said, BRIC is oversubscribed. Last year BRIC received $4.7 billion in funding requests for the $1.16 billion available. Worthy projects are routinely turned away or deferred to future years. But some of this year’s earmarked projects are ones that didn’t score high enough on the competitive award process to get funded. In fact, at least two of the earmarked projects were rejected by BRIC last year because they cost more than the benefits projected to come from them. In other words, they are net losers for taxpayers and thus not eligible for BRIC funding. Lawmakers funded these projects anyway, getting money ahead of other communities that followed the program’s rules.

Another area where earmarking appears to create a two-tiered funding system is in the Save America’s Treasures (SAT) grant program run by the National Park Service (NPS). In SAT, funds are awarded to help pay for rehabilitation or preservation of historic properties or collections (artifacts). It’s competitive. The NPS states that through fiscal year 2020 they’d awarded 1,300 grants out of more than 4,000 applications. And while they haven’t announced awards for fiscal year 2021 (applications were due March 10, 2022), the NPS budget justification anticipates they will award $25 million to approximately 50 projects. Earmarks make this competition even stiffer, at least for some.

The 2022 Omnibus directs $26.2 million to SAT but gobbles up most of the funding. Lawmakers earmark 36 projects totaling $15.2 million–almost 60 percent of funds. Again, the competitive process for awarding funds for 2021 just ended. Those awards will likely be announced in August or September and the solicitation for fiscal year 2022 funded projects will begin. So, at least six months before the grant application even starts, and a year and a half before awards are announced, some 36 entities know they are getting $15.2 million of a $26.2 million pie. Maybe they would have anyway, but by securing an earmark, they don’t have to compete. And that leaves $11.265 million for those not wealthy, savvy, or connected enough to secure funding through an earmark. May the odds be ever in your favor.

Lawmakers have a responsibility to manage the nation’s finances while also delivering for their constituents. It’s a tough job. Balancing competing interests is always difficult. Making funding decisions based on political power, however, is perilous. Creating two separate systems, one based on power and the other based on merit, can lead to inefficiency, cynicism, and even corruption. If funding formulas are flawed, they can be fixed. Using earmarks to end-run transparent, fair, merit-based processes for making funding decisions is a political choice. And it’s a bad one.