With a checkered history of failed projects and bankruptcy, the people behind Georgia-based Blessings Ministries might seem more cursed than blessed.
Yet the nonprofit group did generate one blessing for itself this year: nearly $50,000 of public money for a vague community project in southwest Georgia, courtesy of Rep. Sanford D. Bishop Jr.
That’s not the only “earmark” Bishop brought home to his district. In the latest spending bill approved by Congress, he steered nearly $74,000 to a nonprofit that owes more than $100,000 in back taxes. And $75,000 went to a youth program that employed Bishop’s stepdaughter and son-in-law — with some of the paychecks being deposited in Bishop’s wife’s bank account.
The money is small change in the $410 billion spending measure that President Barack Obama signed last month. But it illustrates how the system of funding for pet projects still works despite all the talk of earmark reform. Obama has promised to work to curb earmarks in future spending bills.
Individual lawmakers still exercise nearly singular discretion over millions of dollars that flow to their districts, though new rules require them to disclose those earmarks on their Web sites. The rules are aimed at shining a light on hidden arrangements and perhaps preventing waste or even fraud. Bishop, a nine-term Democrat who chaired Obama’s Georgia presidential campaign, has not been accused of wrongdoing.
He told the Associated Press in an interview that he was unaware of any concerns involving groups he had helped fund, including the Muscogee County Junior Marshal program, which last month drew the attention of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation over its employment of Bishop’s family members.
Asked how he determines who gets money, Bishop said he makes sure they do good work in his rural district, which mostly grows peanuts and tobacco. The area needs help, he said, and in “the Small Business Administration and traditional agencies … nobody else is doing anything.”
Bishop called the nonprofit Junior Marshal program, in which public safety officials mentor middle school students, a “sore spot” concerning his wife, Vivian Creighton Bishop, and her adult children. He said they didn’t tell him about the family work there or the direct deposits of his son-in-law’s paychecks into Vivian Bishop’s bank account.
Sanford Bishop’s family members were paid almost $15,000 for part-time work. State investigators have not yet released findings on whether they earned the pay. It is unclear whether the arrangement violated financial disclosures Bishop filed with Congress saying he and his wife had no financial ties to his earmark recipients.
A court records search reveals an Internal Revenue Service lien on property owned by another earmark-aided nonprofit, the Heritage Foundation of Thomasville, Ga. The substance-abuse treatment center fell behind on payroll taxes totaling $120,929. The head of the organization, Gloria Jones, said it has been paying down the tax debt, which came about after state budget cuts a few years ago.
Bishop’s $73,693 earmark will help expand job training. “I don’t monitor the Internal Revenue Services’ business,” Bishop said.
