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U.S. Rep. John W. Olver of Amherst is among 33 members of Congress targeted in a Washington Post investigation of members of Congress who have the appearance of benefiting personally through the use of earmarks.

During his final year in office, U.S. Rep. John W. Olver of Amherst finds himself among the congressmen targeted in a Washington Post investigation of members of Congress who have the appearance of benefiting personally through the use of earmarks.

Olver secured three earmarks totaling $5.1 million for a road reconstruction project near his home on West Street over the course of five years in the mid-2000s. The money was designated for the reconstruction of West Street (Route 116) near Atkins Corner, a long-standing priority of Amherst officials who have sought to limit traffic congestion and accidents at the intersection.

Earmarks, while only a small portion of the federal budget, are requests by lawmakers to spend money on specific projects within their district.

The proximity of Olver's residence at 1333 West St. to the road project was cited in the Washington Post investigation published last week. The Post found that 33 members of Congress had directed earmarks to projects next to or within about two miles of property owned by them. While this is legal under congressional ethics rules, it raises questions about whether the 10-term Democrat would see his property values increase as a result of the roadwork.

Olver denies that would occur, and said his nearby home played no role in his decision to seek funding for the project. Instead, Olver said, he did it to fulfill a long-standing request from Amherst officials to get federal money for the work.

"I frankly did not perceive any financial [self-] interest," Olver said in an interview with the Bulletin on Tuesday. "I looked at it as two safety issues with the intersection and the top of the road.

"The value of my property will be reflected by what is going on in the housing market," Olver added. "If the market goes to hell than my property goes down and if [the market] goes up, my property value goes up."

The value of Olver's property fell from $504,100 in 2011 to $486,000 this year, according to the annual assessment of Amherst homes.

Earmark supporter

Olver, who will retire at the end of his current term in January, has a history of directing earmarks to his district. A member of the Appropriations Committee since 1993, Olver's influence reached its height between 2006 and 2010, when Democrats were in the majority in the House of Representatives and Olver was chairman of the subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development. The post gave Olver jurisdiction to allocate funds to federal transportation projects across the country.

In fiscal year 2010, for example, Olver sponsored or co-sponsored 44 earmarks worth $45.9 million, giving him the 74th highest total in Congress, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan watchdog organization based in Washington. They ranged from $8.1 million for military construction at Barnes Air National Guard Base in Westfield, to $75,000 for economic development in the North Quabbin region.

Olver noted that he had secured funding for transportation projects across the district, including intermodal centers in Greenfield, Fitchburg, Holyoke, Pittsfield and Westfield.

"I am actually a supporter of earmarks," Olver said. "The oddity is if you didn't have any at all then small communities would be at the mercy of big areas. Without earmarks you wouldn't get anything like these intermodal centers we have peppered through the district."

And he added that total federal spending on earmarks generally accounts for just 1 percent of the government's budget.

Nevertheless, Olver also acknowledged public uneasiness about how Congress allocates funds with earmarks. Federal spending on earmarks quadrupled between the time he entered Congress in 1991 and the early part of the last decade, Olver said.

Under congressional rules, lawmakers are allowed to attach earmarks to spending bills as well as other general pieces of legislation. But the practice has been increasingly questioned as both congressional and public pressure to reign in federal spending has grown.

Olver said questionable earmarks have tarred the practice's reputation.

"It became somewhat scandalous with the Alaska bridge to nowhere," Olver said of the $398 million bridge proposed by in a 2005 earmark by a pair of Alaska legislators, U.S. Rep. Donald Young and the late Sen. Ted Stevens, both Republicans. The bridge would have served 50 residents in Ketchikan, Alaska, but instead created a national uproar over earmarking and was never funded.

"That gave everyone such a black eye," Olver said.

Request from Amherst

Olver said his decision to seek funding for the Amherst roadwork resulted from an annual meeting with town officials around a decade ago. Olver said that then-Amherst Town Manager Barry Del Castilho asked him to help the town secure funding for the reconstruction of the intersection at Atkins Corner.

Over the next decade Olver attached three earmarks to transportation spending bills on behalf of the project: $800,000 in 2003, $2.88 million in 2006 and $1.47 million in 2008.

"It never occurred to me that it was much of an issue with my proximity to it because I am a half a mile away," Olver said. He added that the original plan called only for reconstructing the intersection. Planners later decided to extend the work on West Street to address traffic concerns, Olver said, adding that he played no role in the project's design.

Work began in 2009 on two roundabouts at the intersection of Bay Road, West Bay Road and West Street. A road extending behind Atkins will connect West Street to West Bay Road and a multiuse path also extends down West Street to Country Corner, near Olver's house.

Amherst officials had sought federal money for the Atkins Corner project for well over a decade.

In a letter written Feb. 24, 1998, to the state, former Amherst Department of Public Works Superintendent Noel Ryan and Del Castilho requested that the project be considered. Six years later, Al Stegemann, director of the state Department of Transportation District 2, which covers much of western Massachusetts, informed the town that the state had designated the project eligible for federal funding. In 2008, state transportation officials, who designed the project, held a public meeting at Hampshire College to discuss it.

Dana Roscoe, transportation project manager for the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, said nothing struck him as improper.

The project went through the same process as any other transportation proposal in the region, Roscoe said. After being deemed eligible to receive federal funds, it was rated in the planning commission's annual priority list, known as the Transportation Improvement Program, and received the second highest score of any project for fiscal year 2010, he said.

"This project was happening with or without the earmark," Roscoe said. "And as a result of it, we were able to fund four other projects" in Easthampton, Ludlow, Northampton and Southwick.