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U.S. senator wants probe of Coconut Road earmark
WASHINGTON - An Oklahoma senator plans is planning to propose legislation next week that would force a special congressional investigation to find out who set aside $10 million in a 2005 transportation bill—after it won final House and Senate passage—to study a possible highway interchange in Southwest Florida. Such an investigation would almost certainly focus on veteran Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young, who was chairman of the House Transportation Committee when the unusually late substantive revision was made in the summer of 1995.
Months earlier, Young collected more than $40,000 at a fundraiser in Bonita Springs, Fla., much of it from a Florida real estate developer and others seeking the interchange along Interstate Highway 75.
McClatchy reported last year that the FBI was looking at Young’s role in redirecting the $10 million, which until then had been specified for widening a portion of I-75, as part of an investigation into his earmarking practices and his relationship with an Alaska oil services company.
Republican Sen. Tom Coburn’s amendment, a copy of which was obtained by McClatchy, would create a select committee appointed by congressional leaders in each chamber to “determine when, how, why and by whom such improper revisions (to the bill) were made.”
