Chicago Tribune
Sept. 3, 2013

Editorial:  R.I.P. Hastert Highway

When a $1 billion highway project once championed by a speaker of the U.S. House gets spiked, it merits a post mortem. Scalpel, please.

The Federal Highway Administration recently reversed its approval of the Prairie Parkway, a pet project of former Speaker Dennis Hastert that would connect Interstate Highway 88 near Elburn with Interstate Highway 80 near Minooka.

Hastert, you might recall, partnered with land speculators and they earned a reported $3 million buying and selling property near the proposed highway in 2005. Hastert secured $207 million in federal grants — yes, earmarks — to jump-start the project that same year.

He held the land in trust, a common but questionable practice for real estate transactions that allows the identities of land owners to be kept secret.

Hastert retired from Congress in 2007 after Republicans lost control of the House. Since then, the Hastert Highway, as it became known, has been falling out of favor.

His successor in the House, Democrat Bill Foster, worked to unravel it. This ruffled some Washington traditionalists, who followed an unwritten code of conduct — the earmarks of a lawmaker shall survive even if the member departs the hallowed halls of Congress. Personal legacy and all that. Congress in the last couple of years has curbed its addiction to earmarks, but still hasn't eliminated the practice.

Foster lost his re-election bid. (He's back for another try, this time against Republican Rep. Judy Biggert.) But his position has prevailed. The highway project faced other obstacles, including a legal battle driven by the Environmental Law and Policy Center and residents who didn't want to see their rural communities divided by a wide ribbon of cement. The region's professional planners rightly made the new highway a low priority.

The Illinois Department of Transportation has negotiated a deal that allows the state to spend Hastert's earmark on improvements to existing roads in Kendall County, including Illinois Highway 47. Without the state's intervention, the money was likely to evaporate.

Autopsy complete. R.I.P. Hastert Highway.
Now when will Congress finally say: R.I.P. earmarks?